A look at the weekly NASCAR power rankings and stock watch heading into the race at San Diego, including Chris Buescher and Carson Hocevar.
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The NASCAR Cup Series makes history this weekend, trading the mountains of Pennsylvania for the waterfront of Naval Base Coronado in San Diego. Denny Hamlin’s three-race winning streak has intensified the battle at the top of the points standings. Now, a brand-new street course full of question marks awaits.
From a blue-collar driver quietly stacking results to a veteran sliding below the Chase cutline, here are the drivers and teams trending up and down heading into San Diego.
📈 Stock Up | NASCAR Power Rankings for San Diego
Chris Buescher
There’s a reason many refer to Chris Buescher as a “blue-collar driver”. He shows up, delivers top-10 finishes without much recognition or fanfare and then does it all over again the following week. The No. 17 team has rebounded nicely from a three-week stretch of getting caught up in on-track incidents.
Buescher was the best Ford at Pocono with a seventh-place finish. This was preceded by a ninth-place result at Michigan which he secured despite a hood pin issue that cost him track position mid-race. The Pocono result equals his current position in the points standings, and he even scored an extra bonus point with the fastest lap in the race.
Looking ahead to San Diego, Buescher doesn’t get nearly enough credit as a road course performer. His career average finish of 13.0 at road and street courses is the best mark among all track types on his résumé. In addition, RFK Racing announced on Tuesday that they are signing Buescher to a multi-year contract extension. That belief makes for a fitting punctuation to this stock watch entry.
Ross Chastain
It has been a dubious 2026 season in the NASCAR power rankings for Ross Chastain. With the highs being few and far between, it’s worth highlighting them when they do come about. A top-10 finish at Pocono can only be viewed as such. In fact, Sunday marked the first time all season that Chastain finished top-10 at a non-drafting track.
With a finish of 16th at Michigan two weeks ago, the No. 1 team has put together a pair of momentum-building results in consecutive weeks. Chastain figures to have an opportunity to stack another strong result at San Diego this weekend. Across 19 road and street course starts since 2023, he has accumulated eight top-10 results. Being able to share setup notes with teammates Shane van Gisbergen and Connor Zilisch certainly doesn’t hurt either.
The Chase Cutline Battle
This weekend’s race at San Diego marks the 17th points-paying event of the 2026 season. That means that there are exactly ten races left before the start of the Chase. With each of the next two weeks featuring road and street courses, it seems fair to reason that the battle to be on the right side of the Chase cutline is going to intensify drastically.
Heading into San Diego, the drivers positioned 15th-21st in the standings are separated by a grand total of 54 points. What’s more, Erik Jones, Austin Cindric, Brad Keselowski and Joey Logano occupy the top four spots on that list. Aside from Cindric, none of the other three are known for their road racing skills.
To make matters even more interesting, Michael McDowell and AJ Allmendinger are currently sitting 20th and 21st in the standings. Long story short, two of the top road racers in the NASCAR power rankings have two straight weeks to make up ground on the cutline. It will be fascinating to see how the next two weeks alter the Chase picture.
📉 Stock Down | NASCAR Power Rankings for San Diego
Carson Hocevar
Two weeks ago at Michigan, Carson Hocevar ruffled plenty of feathers, but he had the speed to deliver a strong finish that had us optimistic in our NASCAR power rankings heading into Pocono. After tagging the outside wall in qualifying, Hocevar was mired deep on the grid and failed to meaningfully improve his track position during the race and finished 20th.
With back-to-back road courses in the next two weeks, this will be a real measuring stick for Hocevar’s mental fortitude and legitimacy as a championship contender. His career average finish at road and street courses is only 22.5 — his worst mark of any track type by a significant margin. The aggressive, door-to-door style that makes him electric on ovals becomes a liability on tight street circuits with unforgiving walls and no room for error.
A stat shared during Prime Video’s Pocono broadcast noted that Hocevar has been involved in 21 incidents with 30 different drivers through the first half of the season. On a 16-turn street course layout that teams are seeing for the first time, that tendency to be in the middle of things could be recipe for disaster.
Brad Keselowski
Chris Buescher may be trending positively, but the same cannot be said for his teammate and boss, Brad Keselowski. The No. 6 Ford has failed to finish each of the last three races since a 15th-place showing at Charlotte. Keselowski has earned a grand total of eight standings points across Nashville, Michigan and Pocono combined. As a result, he has dropped like a rock in the standings and now finds himself below the Chase cutline.
This weekend’s street course race at Naval Base Coronado is hardly the ideal setting for Keselowski to turn his recent misfortunes around. This type of racing has never been a strong suit of the veteran driver. He has not finished top-10 in any of the 19 road and street races contested since the start of 2023. Thus, his slide in the NASCAR power rankings appears destined to get worse.
Alex Bowman
Once upon a time, Alex Bowman made for an interesting sleeper at road courses. Unfortunately, there’s very little to be excited about with regard to the No. 48 car at the moment. In the last five points-paying races, Bowman’s best finish was 17th at Charlotte. He has failed to crack the top-20 in three of those, including this past week at Pocono where he was 27th.
All four Hendrick Motorsports cars will make for an interesting case study in San Diego this week given how terrible the organization ran at Watkins Glen. However, at least the other three cars have been running well in recent weeks. The noise surrounding Bowman’s possible retirement from racing at the end of the season is louder than his on-track performance.
