Let's talk about a few things that were happening on Oct. 4, 2002: Rookie Jimmie Johnson had just taken the Winston Cup points lead, and the race for the championship was completely turned on its head when Sterling Marlin suffered a season-ending neck injury. The Carolina Panthers, the hometown team for many in the NASCAR industry, were 3-1 thanks in part to a three-sack explosion by rookie pass rusher Julius Peppers in his second game. And one family with deep ties in both racing and in football welcomed a new addition.
Some 20 years and change later, Ty Gibbs -- the grandson of Joe Gibbs and son of the late Coy Gibbs -- is beginning to heat up in the early portion of his rookie year in the 2023 NASCAR Cup Series. Gibbs has three ninth-place finishes in a row, giving him three-straight top 10s that have not only given him a decisive early lead in the Rookie of the Year battle, but also have moved him up to 10th in the newest CBS Sports NASCAR Power Rankings.
On a week where much of the top 10 remained stable, Gibbs' seven spots earned was the most significant positive movement, just ahead of four different drivers who gained six spots. Several more went in the wrong direction, with Ricky Stenhouse Jr.'s eight spots lost marking the biggest slide of the week.
Here's a look at our updated Power Rankings:
| Rank | Driver | Change | Comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | William Byron | -- | Sunday marked just the second time that William Byron has failed to win a race that he led over 100 laps in. Both times have been in the spring race at Richmond. | |
| 2 | Alex Bowman | -- | With Kyle Larson now winning a race, Alex Bowman now stands alone among Hendrick drivers (minus the injured Chase Elliott) who haven't won. With another top 10, Bowman is once again the Cup Series points leader by four over Ross Chastain. | |
| 3 | Christopher Bell | It seemed a little out of character for Christopher Bell to call out Ross Chastain in post-race, and it turned out to not be a good idea. Bell thought Chastain ran him up into William Byron, but replay showed that Chastain really wasn't near Bell when he turned Byron on a late restart. | ||
| 4 | Kyle Larson | Kyle Larson's 20th career victory tied him with Speedy Thompson on NASCAR's all-time wins list. Thompson starred in the 1950s, and his 20th and final victory actually came at Richmond driving for the Wood Brothers in 1960. | ||
| 5 | Tyler Reddick | Tyler Reddick had a top 10 finish in Stage 1, but his day went due south from there. Reddick spun out to bring out the pivotal late-race caution, and he was fortunate that he was able to fight back to finish 16th. | ||
| 6 | Joey Logano | -- | Joey Logano's day began with him getting put at the top of three-wide, and he seemed to get caught in similar spots over and over again on restarts throughout the day. Logano made it out of those tight squeezes just fine, finishing seventh. | |
| 7 | Ross Chastain | -- | You know that meme template where a bicyclist puts a stick in his front wheel, then blames something else for the fact that he got hurt? The stick feels a lot like Ross Chastain and the cyclist seems to be whoever is in a wreck that's in the same telephone area code he's in. | |
| 8 | Kevin Harvick | The rest of Stewart-Haas Racing was much improved on Sunday, which speaks to just how much further ahead Kevin Harvick's No. 4 team is from the rest of the building. Harvick finished fifth at Richmond, his third top five this year. | ||
| 9 | Kyle Busch | Kyle Busch's recent stretch of performances have tempered a lot of the narrative that accompanied his win at Fontana. Busch hasn't finished worse than 14th, but his runner-up performance at COTA is his only finish better than eighth since his win in the second race of the year. | ||
| 10 | Ty Gibbs | For the third week in a row, Ty Gibbs finished ninth. This time, it came not far from Washington D.C., where his grandfather coached the local team to nine win seasons on two occasions -- 1992 (his last before turning his focus to NASCAR) and 2007. | ||
| 11 | Brad Keselowski | It took Brad Keselowski all of 2022 to get six top 10 finishes, and his third didn't come until New Hampshire in July. This year, Keselowski has half his 2022 total with his third top 10 in seven races. | ||
| 12 | Denny Hamlin | There was a moment early in Sunday's race where Denny Hamlin appeared to just completely dump J.J. Yeley on the entry to Turn 1, sending Yeley around and into the outside wall. Interestingly, those two were both rookie teammates at Joe Gibbs Racing way back when in 2006. | ||
| 13 | Martin Truex Jr. | Martin Truex Jr. can't seem to buy a break, even though he almost snapped a 50-race winless streak on Sunday. Truex was battling for the lead and the win when a late caution came out, dooming him to an 11th place run thanks to the fact that he had run out of fresh tires. | ||
| 14 | Michael McDowell | Travis Peterson had a tough act to follow after Blake Harris guided Michael McDowell to the best year of his career, but he's answering the call so far. Peterson employed an alternate strategy for McDowell in Richmond, and it worked out with a season-best sixth place finish. | ||
| 15 | Corey LaJoie | Corey LaJoie had to work for everything he got in Richmond, battling in midpack all day before finishing 21st. That's a good day by Spire Motorsports' standards, but finishes of 4th and 11th had somewhat raised the bar for them in the eyes of the public. | ||
| 16 | Todd Gilliland | Oh, if only Todd Gilliland had held out a little bit longer. He was on the same strategy that Josh Berry and Michael McDowell were, but he came to pit road just before Tyler Reddick spun. Gilliland would finish 15th anyway, giving him his third-straight top 15 result. | ||
| 17 | Austin Cindric | Austin Cindric started in the top 10 and was running there early, but his motor would end up going sour midway through the race. Cindric wound up finishing one lap down in 28th, continuing a trend of feast-or-famine results early this season. | ||
| 18 | Daniel Suarez | After a $50,000 fine for his post-race actions at COTA, maybe it was for the best that Daniel Suarez kept his nose clean in Richmond. However, that also meant that Suarez was relegated to a mid-pack run in 28th. | ||
| 19 | Ryan Blaney | Ryan Blaney's pit crew did their absolute damndest to make sure he didn't leave his stall with the wedge wrench still jammed in his car, but the efforts of two different crewmen were all for naught as Blaney got nabbed for removing equipment from the box. Blaney never recovered and would finish a lap down in 26th. | ||
| 20 | Ricky Stenhouse Jr. | The most disappointing days in racing are when it looks like you have a great car in the opening laps and the thing just breaks. That's what happened to Ricky Stenhouse, who had driven up into the top five before a brake failure under the first caution ruined his race. | ||
| 21 | Chase Briscoe | Chase Briscoe finished 12th at Phoenix, marking his second-straight top 15 finish. That doesn't sound like much for a driver who almost made the Championship 4 last year, but it's progress considering how rough the start to SHR's year has been. | ||
| 22 | Bubba Wallace | I really don't know who the crewmember was who fell over the pit wall to draw a pit road penalty for Bubba Wallace's team. But I really, really, really don't want to be the guy who loses his balance like that in front of Michael Jordan AND costs his race team a potential top 10 run. | ||
| 23 | Chris Buescher | As an April Fools' joke, RFK Racing announced on Twitter that their crew chiefs were being replaced by ChatGPT. Human crew chief Scott Graves had Chris Buescher on an alternate tire strategy, but it ended up getting ruined by a loose wheel that put Buescher two laps down in 30th. | ||
| 24 | AJ Allmendinger | It's not often that a third part-time team outruns a race team's two full-time cars, but that's what happened to Kaulig Racing at Richmond. While Chandler Smith had a nice 17th place run in his Cup debut, A.J. Allmendinger was the next best Kaulig car all the way back in 27th. | ||
| 25 | Aric Almirola | A 13th place run at Richmond was exactly what Aric Almirola and his team needed. It marked Almirola's first top 15 all season, and his best finish period since he ran 11th in last year's Southern 500. | ||
| 26 | Harrison Burton | Harrison Burton got on William Byron's nerves after he ended up getting in the way of the race for the lead, but Burton would end up having a nice showing on what was declared Wood Brothers Day in the state of Virginia. Burton got back on the lead lap by race's end and finished 19th. | ||
| 27 | Ryan Preece | It wasn't the finish that Ryan Preece deserved, but Sunday in Richmond marked his finest run so far with Stewart-Haas Racing. Preece ran in the top 15 throughout the day and cracked the top 10 late in the going, but ended up getting shuffled back to 18th. | ||
| 28 | Erik Jones | For a team that had high hopes entering this year, it's been very surprising to see Legacy Motor Club take the step back that they have. Erik Jones has just one finish better than 19th, and his 31st place run at Richmond was his second-worst of the entire season. | ||
| 29 | Austin Dillon | Honestly and truly, it felt like Austin Dillon just disappeared on Sunday. He was never really seen or heard from at Richmond and finished 25th. | ||
| 30 | Justin Haley | I honestly expected Justin Haley to take a much bigger leap in 2023 than he's shown so far. Haley has just one finish better than 19th, with a 29th place finish at Richmond being his worst in any race he's finished this year. |
