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With four consecutive top-5 finishes (a third, fifth, first and second), Martin Truex Jr. remains atop the power rankings.
The big mover this week is Ross Chastain, who goes up three spots from sixth to third thanks to his win Sunday at Nashville Superspeedway that snapped a 42-race winless streak.
Returning to the top 10? Chase Elliott after back-to-back top-5 finishes.
Here’s how drivers rank going into the inaugural Chicago street course race, looking at how they have done in new road-course events: 2021 Indianapolis road course, 2021 Road America, 2021 Circuit of the Americas, 2021 Daytona road course, and 2018 Charlotte road course. It should be noted that some drivers had experience on the Daytona road course from the 2020 Clash, and the 2021 COTA race was one that was stopped early because of heavy rain.
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1. Martin Truex Jr. (Last week: 1): Truex is a strong road-course racer, but new road courses haven’t been his friend. He has just one top-10 (at Road America). He has only one race where he finished worse than 15th.
2. Kyle Larson (LW: 2): Larson was second at COTA and third at Indianapolis. He didn’t finish better than 15th in the other three races.
3. Ross Chastain (LW: 6): Chastain was fourth in the first COTA race and seventh at Road America. The other three races? He wasn’t better than 24th.
4. Denny Hamlin (LW: 5): Hamlin was third at Daytona and fifth at Road America. His worst finish in any of the five races was 23rd in the inaugural Indy race, a race where he had a chance to win right up until the end.
5. Kyle Busch (LW: 3): Busch has one top-10 (third at Road American) and was 10th at COTA. The other races didn’t go as well, as he had a best finish of 20th. That shouldn’t be much of a surprise — Busch is often a feast-or-famine type of driver.
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6. William Byron (LW: 4): Byron probably doesn’t want to read this — his best in any of those five races was an 11th at COTA. He was 33rd or 34th in the other four. That being said, this should be his best road-course debut.
7. Christopher Bell (LW: 7): Bell won the inaugural Daytona road-course race for his first career Cup win. He also was second at the first Road America race. He wasn’t racing Cup in 2018 and didn’t finish the other two inaugural road course events in 2021.
8. Ryan Blaney (LW: 8): Blaney won the 2018 race on the Charlotte road course and was second in the first Indianapolis race. In the other three events, he finished 15th-20th. He’ll probably just be glad to get back in the car and put his hard crash from Nashville behind him.
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After taking the week off, the Cup Series was back for the second half of the season as Ross Chastain secured the Nashville victory.
9. Chase Elliott (LW: NR): Elliott won both the 2021 races at COTA and Road America. He was fourth at Indy and sixth in the 2018 Charlotte road course race. The only race that was frustrating was the Daytona race, where he finished 21st thanks in part to a pop-up storm that resulted in an Elliott spin.
10. Kevin Harvick (LW: NR): Harvick doesn’t have a top-five in any of these races but was sixth in the Daytona road-course race. In the three most recent events, he had one top-20 finish.
On the verge: Chris Buescher, Alex Bowman, Brad Keselowski, Joey Logano, Tyler Reddick, Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
Bob Pockrass covers NASCAR for FOX Sports. He has spent decades covering motorsports, including the past 30 Daytona 500s, with stints at ESPN, Sporting News, NASCAR Scene magazine and The (Daytona Beach) News-Journal. Follow him on Twitter @bobpockrass, and sign up for the FOX Sports NASCAR Newsletter with Bob Pockrass.
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