NASCAR.com’s Pat DeCola ranks the 16 NASCAR Cup Series drivers in The Chase presented by Mobil 1 after Ryan Preece’s win at Daytona International Speedway and before Sunday’s 2026 Chase opener at Darlington Raceway (5 p.m. ET, USA Network, HBO Max, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
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Seed: No. 1
Postseason appearance: 20th
Regular-season stats: 4 wins, 14 top fives, 17 top 10s, 4 poles, 880 laps led
Best Chase tracks: Darlington, Bristol, Martinsville, Kansas, Homestead
Analysis: The Chase resets the field, but it does not erase the fact that Hamlin and the No. 11 team spent the regular season looking more complete than anybody else. He starts with the maximum 2,100 points and a 25-point head start on Blaney, while ranking first in season-long speed, third in defense and fifth on pit road. Daytona was largely immaterial for Chase purposes — P11 after already clinching the top seed at Loudon — and now the schedule immediately tilts toward one of his strongest venues, with five career Cup wins at Darlington. There is no shortage of interesting championship storylines among the field, but Hamlin’s is the biggest: the long-elusive title, the top seed and a Chase schedule loaded with several of his best tracks. If there was ever a “now or never” feel to one of his championship runs — and there certainly have been — this might be the biggest one yet.
Seed: No. 2
Postseason appearance: 10th
Regular-season stats: 3 wins, 6 top fives, 17 top 10s, 4 poles, 828 laps led
Best Chase tracks: Bristol, Talladega, Martinsville, Phoenix
Analysis: Blaney enters The Chase with the second seed, the second-best season-long speed rating and probably the strongest combination of current form and organizational momentum outside Hamlin. Daytona ended in a wreck and 33rd-place run, but only after the No. 12 won Stage 2; the reset still leaves Blaney second, 10 points clear of Reddick. Darlington has historically been more nuisance than playground for Blaney, but third there this spring is a compelling recent data point on top of his strong summer. The glaring weakness remains the No. 12 pit crew, ranked 32nd for the season. If Penske cleans that up, Blaney has very few championship-profile holes to poke.
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Seed: No. 3
Postseason appearance: 6th
Regular-season stats: 5 wins, 11 top fives, 16 top 10s, 5 poles, 449 laps led
Best Chase tracks: Darlington, Kansas, Homestead, Talladega, Las Vegas
Analysis: If Reddick needed a reset in every sense of the word, he got one. The five-win juggernaut No. 45 team from spring spent much of the summer fighting itself, but finishes of 11th, eighth and third in the final three regular-season races suggest the freefall may finally be leveling out and perhaps Reddick can sleep soundly for now. Daytona in particular looked much more like the old No. 45, which led late and was still attacking for the win on the final lap. Better still, The Chase opens where Reddick delivered perhaps his most impressive performance all year, winning at Darlington in March. He starts just 35 points behind Hamlin and still ranks third in both speed and passing — the early-season monster may have picked an awfully convenient time to wake back up.
Seed: No. 5
Postseason appearance: 4th
Regular-season stats: 1 win, 10 top fives, 13 top 10s, 359 laps led
Best Chase tracks: Darlington, Phoenix, Bristol, Las Vegas
Analysis: There might not be a driver in the field happier to see the Southern 500 sitting at the front door of The Chase. Briscoe enters just 45 points behind his JGR teammate Hamlin after a summer in which the No. 19 evolved from fringe contender when it started into one of the most consistently dangerous cars in the garage at the turn of autumn. His season profile backs up the eye test: first in defense, first on restarts and fourth in pit-crew performance. Then there is Darlington itself. Briscoe has won the last two Southern 500s, doing it with two different organizations. Forget dark horse. That label no longer fits, especially where Briscoe was title-eligible down to the wire last year, too.
Seed: No. 6
Postseason appearance: 6th
Regular-season stats: 0 wins, 11 top fives, 13 top 10s, 1 pole, 559 laps led
Best Chase tracks: Bristol, Kansas, Phoenix, Martinsville, Homestead
Analysis: Bell enters The Chase in one of the strangest positions imaginable: fifth in these rankings, sixth in the reset and still winless despite spending chunks of the year looking as fast as anybody. Seven runner-up finishes will do that to a season, yet the championship case remains obvious — Bell ranks fourth in speed, fifth on restarts and carries the seventh-ranked pit crew into the postseason. Darlington is less straightforward after a 19th there this spring, though Bell has plenty of strength scattered throughout the remaining nine tracks. The guy spent months knocking on the door to get here, but The Chase is where “almost” stops carrying much, if any, value.
Seed: No. 4
Postseason appearance: 2nd
Regular-season stats: 2 wins, 10 top fives, 16 top 10s, 1 pole, 280 laps led
Best Chase tracks: Bristol, Darlington, Phoenix, Las Vegas, Kansas
Analysis: Gibbs took a nasty Daytona hit at exactly the wrong moment, collecting damage in Hocevar’s Lap 155 crash and even more in the final-lap melee to finish 34th, but the reset does him a considerable favor. He starts fourth in the standings, only 40 points behind Hamlin and five behind Reddick, after a regular season that produced two wins and one of the most balanced underlying statistical profiles in the field. Darlington is quietly encouraging, too: Gibbs finished sixth there in March, and Bristol already delivered his breakthrough Cup victory this season, so he could get off to a quick start. There is still somewhat of an “upstart” quality to the championship conversation around him, but the statistics stopped indicating him as one a while ago.
Seed: No. 9
Postseason appearance: 13th
Regular-season stats: 2 wins, 5 top fives, 9 top 10s, 1 pole, 536 laps led
Best Chase tracks: Las Vegas, Phoenix, Talladega, Bristol, Martinsville
Analysis: Here we go again. Logano spent much of the regular season looking like an afterthought, then won twice in a four-race stretch and suddenly arrives at The Chase with the same annoying-for-everyone-else profile that has preceded three championships. The reset leaves him 65 points behind Hamlin, a real hole but hardly insurmountable over 10 races. His season-long metrics remain surprisingly pedestrian — 12th in speed, 16th in passing, 14th in defense — which is why this ranking stops at seventh rather than following the championship hardware all the way toward the top. Nobody should be shocked if he disappears for a week. Nobody should be shocked if he is still standing at Homestead, either.
Seed: No. 7
Postseason appearance: 10th
Regular-season stats: 0 wins, 9 top fives, 13 top 10s, 659 laps led
Best Chase tracks: Las Vegas, Kansas, Darlington, Bristol, Homestead
Analysis: The reset might be exactly what Larson needs because judging the No. 5 strictly by regular-season results became a maddening exercise months ago. The speed never disappeared — Larson still ranks fifth there, while being second in defense and second on restarts, paired with the No. 1 pit crew in the series — but too many Sundays ended nowhere near where the car showed it belonged. Darlington captures the contradiction perfectly: Larson owns a Southern 500 win there, yet his recent results have been wildly uneven. He starts 55 points behind Hamlin as part of a Hendrick group that, remarkably, doesn’t feel like the championship favorite it usually does. That said, Larson is still the Hendrick driver most capable of changing that perception in a hurry, and perhaps as soon as Sunday.
Seed: No. 8
Postseason appearance: 10th
Regular-season stats: 2 wins, 6 top fives, 9 top 10s, 317 laps led
Best Chase tracks: Talladega, Martinsville, Phoenix, Kansas
Analysis: Elliott enters The Chase in a much healthier place than he appeared headed a month ago, but he remains one of the harder champions to peg. The two wins remain banked, and Hendrick showed signs of life again late in the regular season, yet Elliott’s underlying numbers — 11th in speed, 11th in defense and 14th on restarts — are not exactly the profile of a driver poised to steamroll 10 races. He starts 60 points behind Hamlin, and Darlington was similarly middling in March. Hendrick going an entire Chase without seriously threatening for the title would qualify as a major development, as unlikely as it seemed in February, but Elliott has 10 races to make sure that conversation never gets there.
Seed: No. 15
Postseason appearance: 4th
Regular-season stats: 0 wins, 2 top fives, 6 top 10s, 51 laps led
Best Chase tracks: Gateway, Talladega, Darlington
Analysis: This is where the board starts getting interesting. Cindric is only the 15th seed, a whopping 95 points behind Hamlin, but he enters The Chase on easily the strongest footing of the lower-seeded group. Third at Richmond Raceway, 12th at Loudon and sixth at Daytona, while Penske is picking up steam, make for a sturdy closing stretch, and the No. 2 also ranks fifth in defense for the season. More important for Sunday: Cindric finished fifth at Darlington in March, his best Cup result there, while World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway is already a Cup victory site. He has a mountain to climb in points, but there are considerably shakier profiles starting ahead of him. A sleeper fits.
Seed: No. 14
Postseason appearance: 3rd
Regular-season stats: 0 wins, 4 top fives, 11 top 10s, 214 laps led
Best Chase tracks: Kansas, Talladega, Las Vegas, Homestead
Analysis: Wallace made it through a full regular season without needing a last-gasp miracle, but now comes the harder assignment: proving he can stay relevant for 10 straight weeks. He starts 14th, 90 points behind Hamlin, though his broader performance profile is much stronger than that seed suggests — seventh in passing, ninth in speed and eighth in restarts, defense and pit crew. Darlington was a disaster this spring, but there are friendlier venues ahead, particularly Kansas Speedway and Talladega, where Wallace has already won in Cup. The No. 23 has enough speed to make noise in this Chase. The larger question is whether it can stop turning good cars into avoidable, self-induced problems.
Seed: No. 11
Postseason appearance: 3rd
Regular-season stats: 1 win, 3 top fives, 7 top 10s, 40 laps led
Best Chase tracks: Darlington, Las Vegas, Kansas, Gateway, Charlotte
Analysis: Suárez could hardly have drawn up a better bridge into The Chase after a quiet summer than his Daytona runner-up. Starting 23rd, he avoided the late carnage and finished second for the second consecutive year in the summer Daytona race; a nice jolt for a team whose underlying season metrics remain much less flattering than its standings position. He starts 75 points behind Hamlin and ranks only 18th in speed, 20th in passing and 21st in defense. Darlington offers a reason to believe the result column can keep outrunning the spreadsheets after Suárez finished seventh there in March. This may not look like a championship profile on paper, but The Chase has 10 races to make paper irrelevant, and being the defending Coca-Cola 600 winner is notable given Charlotte is returning to its oval format for the fall race.
Seed: No. 10
Postseason appearance: 3rd
Regular-season stats: 0 wins, 2 top fives, 10 top 10s, 81 laps led
Best Chase tracks: Bristol, Darlington, Kansas
Analysis: Buescher enters The Chase with one of the better Darlington profiles in the lower half of the field — but one of the murkier overall championship cases. Daytona was a wash after Larson’s push sent the No. 17 spinning from the lead at the Stage 1 finish, eventually leaving Buescher 40th. The reset places him 70 points behind Hamlin, while the broader season says “solid” much more loudly than “champion” — 10th in speed, 19th in passing, but backed by the third-ranked pit crew. Darlington is where the argument gets better, as Buescher finished ninth there this spring, and Bristol remains the site of one of his signature Cup victories. If he is going to announce himself as more than Chase afterthought, Sunday is an excellent place to do it, and RFK Racing is already riding a high.
Seed: No. 13
Postseason appearance: 8th
Regular-season stats: 0 wins, 4 top fives, 11 top 10s, 176 laps led
Best Chase tracks: Martinsville, Las Vegas, Darlington, Phoenix, Homestead
Analysis: Byron has spent three straight years reaching the Championship 4, yet begins this revamped Chase as one of its strangest wild cards. He starts 13th and 85 points behind Hamlin after a winless, uneven regular season, but still owns the second-ranked pit crew and eighth-best speed profile. Darlington should be an obvious get-right venue: Byron won there in 2023 and finished eighth this March, with several more historically strong tracks waiting for him later in The Chase to help prod him along. Still, the broader Hendrick question hangs over him as much as anyone. Three straight championship-round appearances built a reputation that this year’s results have not yet matched, but indicate what he’s capable of.
Seed: No. 12
Postseason appearance: 1st
Regular-season stats: 1 win, 5 top fives, 9 top 10s, 2 poles, 157 laps led
Best Chase tracks: Talladega, Darlington, Bristol, Gateway
Analysis: Hocevar’s regular season contained enough brilliance to make The Chase comfortably — and enough late carnage to make you wonder what might be left of the momentum. Daytona followed a P31 at Iowa Speedway and 37th-place showing at Richmond with another ugly box score — 38th after losing control while battling Preece for second and collecting Jones before the race went to overtime. That leaves him 80 points behind Hamlin after the reset, paired with the 27th-ranked pit crew and only the 14th-best season-long speed. And yet Darlington offers a very real counterpoint: Hocevar finished fourth there in March after starting 16th. The talent is not the question; it’s whether the unevenness can stop wobbling long enough for Hocevar to weaponize it in this 10-race run.
Seed: No. 16
Postseason appearance: 1st
Regular-season stats: 1 win, 1 top five, 7 top 10s, 55 laps led
Best Chase tracks: Bristol, Martinsville, Kansas, Darlington
Analysis: Nobody arrives at Darlington feeling better about how Saturday night ended, and nobody arrives with a steeper championship hill. Preece entered Daytona 31 points behind Shane van Gisbergen for the final Chase spot, meaning even a runner-up finish would not have gotten the job done. He had to win — and, after getting collected in the Stage 1-ending crash and surviving a chaotic final lap, did exactly that for his first career Cup victory. The reward is the No. 16 seed and a reset, exactly 100 points behind Hamlin. While Darlington produced a respectable 13th-place finish in March, his season-long speed ranks only 15th, so there is no pretending this suddenly looks like an obvious title run. But Preece already faced one must-win scenario this year and answered it about as emphatically as possible. At this point, it’s anybody’s ballgame.