The AdventHealth 400 at Kansas Speedway was the ninth race of the 2026 NASCAR Cup Series season, reinforcing Toyota's dominance. The rankings of the top NASCAR drivers have seen notable shifts following this race.
Key points
AdventHealth 400 was the ninth race of the 2026 NASCAR Cup Series season
Toyota has been the standout team this season
Tyler Reddick remains the top-ranked driver
Power rankings reflect ongoing evaluations of driver performance
ToyotaNASCAR Cup SeriesTyler Reddick
Sunday’s AdventHealth 400 at Kansas Speedway marked the ninth points race of the 2026 NASCAR Cup Series season. That provides another excellent data point to add to our weekly analysis as we continue to evaluate the best NASCAR drivers right now.
Toyota has been the standout team in our NASCAR power rankings this season and Sunday’s race at Kansas did little to change that. However, there’s still plenty of movement in our rankings of the best drivers in NASCAR today.
1. Tyler Reddick (Previously: 1)
NASCAR Power Rankings
Scott Sewell-Imagn Images
Tyler Reddick now has five wins in nine races this season. It’s just absurd how excellent the No. 45 car has been in 2026. Is he as dominant as Dale Earnhardt was when he won five of the first nine races? No, and the fact that Reddick ranks fifth in laps led (189) demonstrates that. What he is proving this year is that he’ll presumably be the regular-season champion, and that 25-point lead in The Chase with how well he’s performing at mile-and-a-halfs might now make him the championship favorite.
If not for the “Cody Ware Caution”, Denny Hamlin probably wins the race at Kansas on Sunday. However, it’s also worth the No. 11 driver acknowledging that he was again put in position to win that race because Reddick’s car momentarily ran into a fuel issue. Not earning that second win of 2026, which would’ve tied him with Kyle Busch in all-time Cup Series victories, certainly has to sting for Hamlin. Fortunately, he still won Stage 1, he boasts the second-best average finishing position (5.3) in the last six races, and he’s led the Cup Series in laps led (562) during that span while amassing 292 points (48.7 per race).
Q&A
Who are the top 10 NASCAR drivers after the Kansas race in 2026?
The top 10 NASCAR drivers include Tyler Reddick, who remains in the first position.
What impact did the AdventHealth 400 have on the NASCAR power rankings?
The AdventHealth 400 provided valuable data that influenced the rankings, particularly highlighting Toyota's strong performance.
How many races have been completed in the 2026 NASCAR Cup Series season?
As of the AdventHealth 400, nine points races have been completed in the 2026 NASCAR Cup Series season.
Which team is leading in the NASCAR power rankings for 2026?
Toyota is currently the standout team in the NASCAR power rankings for the 2026 season.
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Kyle Larson has now gone 33 consecutive races without a win in the Cup Series. It seems unfathomable for that to happen to the driver of the No. 5 car, but heartbreaking defeats have been a theme for him this year. While it’s clear that Hendrick Motorsports and Chevrolet are still trying to figure things out with their new setup, as evidenced by how other HMS cars are performing, Larson is still on a tear right now. He’s won three of the last four stages and accrued 54 points in consecutive races, all while finishing in the top-10 of six of his last seven races (32nd at Darlington). A victory is coming for Larson, but even without it he’s back to performing like one of the best NASCAR drivers.
Ignore the 20th-place finish for Christopher Bell at Kansas Speedway this past weekend. He finished top-five in both stages, posted the fastest lap and he was inside the top four at the start of overtime. Unfortunately for him, fate was taken out of his hands. Reddick got moved up right into Bell sending the No. 20 car into the wall and the damage sent him plummeting to 20th place as he spun out. Bell had a race-winning car on Sunday and at the very least should’ve had a top-five finish.
5. Ryan Blaney (Previously: 2)
NASCAR Power Rankings
Jim Dedmon-Imagn Images
Team Penske finally made a change to Ryan Blaney’s pit crew this past week and it didn’t even matter. He raced fairly well early on, but then contact with A.J. Allmendinger on pit road seemed to damage the splitter on the No. 12 car. The team took a penalty for too many men over the wall to work on it and, after qualifying ninth at Kansas, Blaney finished in 24th after spending parts of the final stage multiple laps down. It ended a streak of three consecutive top-six finishes and a seven-race strech where he had an average finishing position of 4.6. Blaney is right up there with Reddck, Larson and Hamlin in terms of his racing ability, but his team isn’t doing him any favors this year.
Ty Gibbs now has seven consecutive races with a top-10 finish, to go along with his first-ever Cup Series win, and has averaged 43.1 points per race during that stretch. So why is he dropping in our NASCAR power rankings? Because for all the speed the No. 54 car had on Sunday at Kansas and for as great of a job as his pit crew did in getting him back out there quickly, he really struggled to make passes. It was a very uneventful race for Gibbs, and it felt like he got less out of his car and team than other top drivers would.
That’s a nice rebound from William Byron after whatever happened with the setup of the No. 24 car at Bristol (30th place). Byron certainly didn’t have race-winning speed on Sunday at Kansas; the car wasn’t even good enough to challenge for a top-five average running position. However, after qualifying 14th, Byron landed 11th in Stage 1 and held 13th at the end of Stage 2. He worked his way to seventh by the end of overtime, his fifth top-10 finish in the last six races. Now it’s up to Hendrick to improve that troubling 24.0 average starting position from the last two races.
8. Chase Elliott (Previously: 7)
NASCAR Power Rankings, Chase Elliott
Scott Sewell-Imagn Images
By the standards of how things should be for the No. 9 team with Chase Elliott behind the wheel, Sunday was fine. He finished sixth in Stage 1, and Alan Gustafson’s pit-timing strategy paid off with a fourth-place finish in the second stage. Elliott has scored 40-plus points in three of his last four races with three top-10 finishes, but there are also those two rough showings at Phoenix (23rd) and Bristol (22nd) that highlight the greater inconsistency we’ve seen from this team compared to 2025.
Chase Briscoe would be in The Chase if it started today. That’s a nice position to be in following that first month of the season, when he finished 36th or worse in three of the first four races and totaled just 4 points in that span. Briscoe boasts an 8.4 average finishing position in the last five races, and while there’s certainly still room for the No. 19 team to improve, they are at least getting back on the right track.
10. Bubba Wallace (Previously: Unranked)
NASCAR Power Rankings
Gary A. Vasquez-Imagn Images
It’s performances like this that should have Bubba Wallace experiencing even more regret over his actions at Martinsville, which conservatively cost him at least 15 points. He finished fifth on Sunday and largely hung around in the top six of the field for the majority of the race at Kansas. He’s now tied with William Byron for points, and if he had kept a cooler head a few weeks ago, we’d be talking about him sitting just a few points behind Elliott for sixth in the standings.
