While there was a new winner for the season last weekend at World Wide Technology Raceway in Austin Cindric, the No. 1 spot still belongs to Denny Hamlin.
The Joe Gibbs Racing driver continued his hot run with a runner-up finish to Cindric.
Here’s a look at the NBC Sports NASCAR Power Rankings after this past weekend’s race:
1. Denny Hamlin (Last week: 1): His runner-up finish was his fifth consecutive top-five finish. To put that into perspective, that’s the same number of top-10 finishes reigning Cup champion Ryan Blaney has this season.
2. Brad Keselowski (3) — He placed third last weekend for his third consecutive top-three finish. He has finished in the top three in five of the last seven races.
3. Kyle Larson (2) — He finished 10th despite an incident with Kyle Busch last weekend. Larson has five top 10s in the last eight races, including a win, two runner-up results and a third-place finish.
4. Chase Elliott (4) — He has finished in the top 10 in six of the last nine races after his 13th-place result last weekend. He has finished no worse than 19th in a race and has seven top 10s through 15 races.
5. William Byron (5) — His 15th-place finish at WWT Raceway is only the third time in the last 10 races he has failed to score a top-10 result.
6. Tyler Reddick (8) — Back-to-back fourth-place finishes has the 23XI Racing driver moving up the rankings.
7. Christopher Bell (9) — Was in position for his third victory of the season until his engine soured while dueling Ryan Blaney for the lead late in last weekend’s race. Bell managed to finish seventh for his third top 10 in the last four races.
8. Alex Bowman (7) — His streak of five consecutive top 10 finishes ended at WWT Raceway when he placed 28th.
9. Ty Gibbs (10) — Just missed his third top 10 in a row with an 11th-place result at WWT Raceway.
10. Martin Truex Jr. (6) — His 34th-place result last weekend is his third finish in a row outside the top 10. He has finished outside the top 10 in five of the last seven races.
