The Cup Series will complete the “West Coast Swing” Sunday when the checkered flag is waived in the United Rentals 500(k) at Phoenix Raceway. This is the most important race on the regular season schedule because it is also the track the Cup Series will crown their 2023 champion at. This race tends to get wild as drivers cut the dogleg as they make a run to the start/finish line. It may be even wilder this year.
The racing on the short tracks was not very good last year, so NASCAR is making changes to the cars to help improve the action during the race. Each manufacture entered the season with a new nose and hood on their cars. This should change the way the cars drive Sunday, but that is not all of the changes that NASCAR made.
NASCAR announced last week that the Cup Series will use a new aero package at the short tracks (not including Bristol and Dover) this year. The rear-spoiler will be reduced from 4” to 2”. There are also many changes made to the diffuser underneath the car. All of this adds to about a 30% reduction in downforce and should make the cars more difficult to drive and more on the edge.
All of these changes are going to affect the way the cars drive and it could bring new drivers into play this weekend. We will not know for sure which team will hit on the setups until the 50-minute practice session is completed Friday.
I used the data from the two races at Phoenix last year, the data from the short, flat track races in 2022 and the data from the last six races at Phoenix to figure out the “Early Week Driver Rankings”. I also gave a slight bump to Ross Chastain, Brad Keselowski, Christopher Bell, Joey Logano, Erik Jones and Ricky Stenhouse Jr. since they tested the aero package at Phoenix in January.
Here are my early week driver rankings for the United Rentals 500(k) …
| Driver |
| 1. Joey Logano |
| 2. Ryan Blaney |
| 3. Kevin Harvick |
| 4. William Byron |
| 5. Ross Chastain |
| 6. Denny Hamlin |
| 7. Kyle Busch |
| 8. Chase Briscoe |
| 9. Kyle Larson |
| 10. Christopher Bell |
| 11. Aric Almirola |
| 12. Tyler Reddick |
| 13. Martin Truex Jr. |
| 14. Austin Cindric |
| 15. Chris Buescher |
| 16. AJ Allmendinger |
| 17. Austin Dillon |
| 18. Daniel Suarez |
| 19. Brad Keselowski |
| 20. Alex Bowman |
| 21. Erik Jones |
| 22. Bubba Wallace |
| 23. Ryan Preece |
| 24. Ty Gibbs |
| 25. Josh Berry |
| 26. Harrison Burton |
| 27. Justin Haley |
| 28. Michael McDowell |
| 29. Noah Gragson |
| 30. Ricky Stenhouse Jr. |
| 31. Zane Smith |
| 32. Corey LaJoie |
| 33. Todd Gilliland |
| 34. Ty Dillon |
| 35. Cody Ware |
| 36. B.J. McLeod |
The updated rankings will be posted Saturday after qualifying.
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