RowdySpeedway’s weekly power rankings are based on the past couple of races along with the driver’s past results at the upcoming race track.
1. Jimmie Johnson – Johnson earned his second pole in succession and wound up winning his second race in a row after dominating the first half of the 334-lap race at the Texas Motor Speedway. Johnson outdueled Brad Keselowski on the final restart of the night with two laps to go to win his 60th race of his career and more importantly extended the gap between him and Brad by five markers.
Johnson granted Chevrolet their 700th Sprint Cup Series victory on Sunday, and we now head to a Phoenix track where the No. 48 team has finished no worse than 14th over the last five races there.
2. Brad Keselowski – Who would’ve thought bad Brad would be in championship contention as we entered the ninth race of the Chase, let alone right in the thick of things? Brad overcame a costly pit-stop in the late going after he slid his Miller Lite Dodge too deep into his pit box to bring home a solid second-place finish. The team made a bold call and awarded themselves lost track position with 25 laps remaining as they took two tires while the rest of the field took four fresh rubbers. Brad was able to keep his car up front and was on the verge of winning his sixth race of the season if it wasn’t for a caution with 5 to go.
3. Clint Bowyer – Bowyer needed to run exceptionally well and catch Johnson and Brad on their off days if he wanted any chance of truly joining the championship fight. Instead, Bowyer watched Brad and five-time duel it out on an autumn Texas night. Bowyer finished sixth and finds himself 36 points back.
4. Kasey Kahne – Just like Bowyer, Kahne needed to run extremely well and have his Hendrick Motorsports stablemate along with Keselowski to have rare poor showings, but neither of those cases came true and Kahne finds himself completely out of the championship picture.
Kahne ran quietly in the top-ten most of the day until his Hendrick Motorsports Chevy slapped the turn one wall with 13 to go, which halted him to a 25th-place finish.
Kahne won the Phoenix Fall race a year ago while driving for Red Bull Racing.
5. Matt Kenseth – Kenseth overcame an ill-handling race car in the first half of Sunday’s AAA Texas 500 to finish fourth, which was the 13th top-five finish of the season for the 2003 Sprint Cup Series champion. Kenseth found himself buried in the basement of the Chase standings in the initial few weeks of the ten-race chase, but Kenseth has battled back with two wins and sits fifth in the standings.
6. Jeff Gordon – Gordon was charging to the front of the field as laps clicked away, but a tire issue in the late stages and an accident with teammate Kasey Kahne near the end awarded Gordon with a not so beautiful finish of 14th.
Gordon, like most drivers at this point, are shooting for victories and Phoenix is a track where he’s gone to victory lane twice in his career. Gordon has the third best average finish among active drivers there.
7. Denny Hamlin – Hamlin’s championship aspirations were halted last weekend in Virginia as his car stood listless on the backstretch of the famed short track. Like most chasers at this stage in the game, Hamlin can only try for wins, but Hamlin never saw himself in contention Sunday in Texas.
Hamlin finished a forgettable 20th and falls two spots in the Chase standings to seventh. In two races, Hamlin has fallen from third to seventh.
Hamlin won at Phoenix earlier this season.
8. Tony Stewart – This sure hasn’t been a duplicate of Stewart’s amazing 2011 Chase for the Sprint Cup run, but the defending Texas winner matched his best results of the Chase with a fifth-place finish Sunday.
9. Kyle Busch – Kyle continues to run the best among the non chasers. Kyle has scored top-5 finishes in four of his last five races and led 80 laps Sunday before settling for a third-place finish.
10. Greg Biffle – Biffle finished 10th, which is a disappointment considering Biffle started second, and Texas is one of his better tracks.
Biffle has racked up two top-5 finishes over the past five races in Phoenix.
11. Martin Truex Jr. – Truex finished 13th for the second week in row, and he finished outside the top-10 for the third week in a row.
Truex has finished in the top-20 11 times over his 13 race career at the Phoenix International Raceway.
12. Kevin Harvick – Harvick posted his first top-10 finish of the Chase Sunday in Texas with a ninth-place showing. It’s been a tough year for Richard Childress Racing and it sure didn’t start off well for the No. 29 team on Sunday as a skydiver’s sandbag attached to the Texas state flag struck Harvick’s race car on pit-road, which left a dent in the Rheem Chevrolet that the team was forced to fix prior to the race.
Harvick finished second at Phoenix in the spring.
