Christopher Bell, Ryan Blaney, William Byron and Kyle Larson are the youngest group of Championship 4 contenders since the current 16-race elimination playoff format started in 2016. They may also be the most evenly matched: No driver stands out as an overwhelming favorite.
When a championship depends on a single race, mistakes and luck play an outsize role in determining the winner. That makes trying to predict a winner an exercise in futility. Instead, I’ll summarize each driver’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.
This post covers Bell and Blaney. Sunday, I’ll do the same for Byron and Larson.
Christopher Bell
Oklahoma native Christopher Bell made it to the Championship 4 by winning at Homestead. The driver, who will turn 29 in December, is in his third year with Joe Gibbs Racing. In 143 races, Bell has earned six Cup Series wins, 31 top-five finishes and 62 top-10 finishes.
Phoenix marks Bell’s second consecutive playoff appearance. In 2022, he finished third at Phoenix. Bell is again Joe Gibbs Racing’s only driver in the finals, as well as the sole Toyota representative.
Strength: Qualifying. Starting position is critical at Phoenix. Playoff contenders choose their pit boxes before the rest of the field, with the fastest of the four choosing first. Pit box No. 1 at Phoenix provides a potentially race-winning advantage, as Larson proved in 2021. Of the four contenders, Bell posts the best qualifying average across the entire season (9.5) but has been on fire in the playoffs with an average starting position of 5.6.
Strength: Adam Stevens. Stevens is a two-time championship-winning crew chief with Kyle Busch in 2015 and 2019. He has managed 34 wins, including six with Bell over the last three years. Despite some snapping at Homestead as Bell was on the verge of going a lap down, their relationship is a prime example of how a veteran crew chief can guide a young driver.
Weakness: Pit crew unpredictability. The No. 20 pit crew has not delivered for Bell, and this isn’t the first year. Last year, a mistake on the last pit stop of the championship race cost Bell 11 positions on pit road with less than 30 green-flag laps left in the race. Despite personnel changes, 2023 hasn’t been much better. The team incurred five pit-road penalties, but Bell himself is responsible for only one of those. At the fall Kansas race, Bell lost 37 positions on pit road over seven pit stops.
Weakness: Winning at Phoenix. Bell has the worst average finish at Phoenix of all playoff contenders. His average finishing position is 14.0 in the Next Gen car and 14.7 from 2017-21 in the Gen-6 vehicle. Bell also has the fewest wins among playoff contenders in the regular season (two) and the playoffs (one).
Opportunity: Momentum. Bell acknowledged that the start of his season was ‘disappointing’; however, the team came to life in the playoffs with only one finish outside the top 15. His average finishing position improved from 13.6 in the regular season to 8.6 in the playoffs. But a good finish doesn’t matter in this race: Winning does.
Threat: Divided Efforts. Three JGR drivers made the Round of 8 this year, which means each team focused on getting their own driver into the Championship 4. That precluded a sustained, company-wide effort to focus resources on Bell.
Ryan Blaney
Ryan Blaney is in his eighth full-time season with Penske Racing, earning his spot in the Championship 4 by winning last week’s race at Martinsville. In 305 career races, Blaney has amassed 10 Cup Series wins, 68 top-five finishes and 130 top-10 finishes. Blaney turns 30 on New Year’s Eve.
Strength: Phoenix. In the three races with the Next Gen car at Phoenix, Blaney has two second-place finishes and one fourth-place finish for a 2.7 average finish. That’s the best average finish of any Championship 4 driver at Phoenix. The next closest is William Byron with an 8.3 average. Blaney also finished second at Gateway and third at New Hampshire, tracks that correlate well with Phoenix. Blaney has never won at Phoenix, but he had never won at Martinsville before last weekend, either.
Strength: Ford Focus. Since teammate (and defending champion) Joey Logano exited the playoffs in the first round, Blaney has been Penske’s sole hope. That allowed the company to apply all of its brainpower to Blaney’s efforts. Now that Blaney is also Ford’s only representative (out of six drivers who made the playoffs), all of the manufacturer’s resources are also focused on him.
Weakness: An uneven season leading into a first-time Championship 4 spot. This is Blaney’s first run in the Championship 4. It’s also crew Chief Jonathan Hassler’s first run as well. Hassler is in his second year with Blaney, having crew chiefed 89 races — 67 of those with Blaney. They’ve spent much of the season playing catch-up because of Ford’s well-documented aerodeficit. Blaney has led only 560 laps this season compared to Larson’s 1127 and Byron’s 922. Blaney also has the worst average starting position among the four drivers at 12.6 and the worst average running position at 12.7.
Opportunity: Momentum. Like Bell, Blaney comes into the playoffs on an upswing. His average finishing position improved from 15.8 in the regular season to 10.3 in the playoffs and he’s led 42.1% of his season laps led in the last nine races. Blaney has the best average running position in the playoffs (8.8) among the four championship contenders. He scored two of his three season wins in the playoffs — and they were two of the last five races.
Threat: The competition. Even though Blaney came in second in the spring at Phoenix, he was second to Byron, one of his competitors this weekend. He also must compete against drivers who have not only done well at Phoenix in the past but have something to prove. This is Kevin Harvick’s last race at one of his best tracks. Although Harvick hasn’t finished better than fifth in the Next Gen car at Phoenix, a win for him would be a storybook ending to his career. It would work for Blaney only if Blaney came in second.