NASCAR Cup Series Standings Update – Chase Elliott, Hendrick Motorsports Flexing Some Muscle

Thanks to Mother Nature, this past weekend’s NASCAR Cup Series race at Dover Motor Speedway was not completed until Monday. Chase Elliott bagged his first win of the year to continue what has been a strong spring for Hendrick Motorsports. With Dover in the books, 11 of 26 regular-season points races for the Cup Series are now complete. The racing continues to be must-see TV thanks to the increased parity and competitiveness that can largely be attributed to the Next Gen Car. The calendar may have turned to May, but the NASCAR standings remain tightly packed together.

The first six races of the 2022 NASCAR Cup Series season featured unique winners. Two of those drivers had never won at the sport’s premier level before. Well, one of those drivers now has two Cup Series wins on his resume. With his victory at Talladega two weeks ago, Ross Chastain joined William Byron as the only two drivers with multiple wins through the first 11 races of the campaign. Chase Elliott winning at Dover this past week ensured that he became the ninth different driver to win a race this season.

While there continue to be some surprises at both ends of the NASCAR standings spectrum, the powerhouse teams do seem to be gradually asserting themselves at the top. The following article contains a table with the updated NASCAR Cup Series point standings. Discussion of several noteworthy developments after the first 11 races is also included.

NASCAR Cup Series Standings Update | After Race 11 at Dover

Refer to the table below for the updated NASCAR Cup Series points standings through the first five races of the season. The table also includes additional NASCAR Cup Series stats including Wins, Top-5 Finishes, Top-10 Finishes and Stage Wins. The table is sortable by driver and statistic for your viewing convenience.

Chase Elliott Pads NASCAR Standings Lead with Dover Victory

Despite the fact that a goose egg lingered in his win column for longer than he would have preferred, Chase Elliott has been able to maintain a lead in the NASCAR Cup Series standings for the better part of the 2022 season. Upon winning the DuraMAX Drydene 400 at Dover on Monday afternoon, that lead only grew larger.

Elliott notably won a race in which current NASCAR standings runner-up Ryan Blaney sputtered to a 26th-place showing. As a result, the No. 9 team was able to pad their lead in the points in a big way. Elliott outscored Blaney by 29 points at Dover and now sits 50 points clear of the No. 12 team. No other driver is closer than 65 points back of Elliott after the season’s first 11 races.

Winning at Dover also enabled Elliott to get a couple of monkeys off his back. For starters, it was his first win since Road America last season and thus snapped a 26-race winless streak for the former series champion. However, one would have had to go back even further than that to find the last time Elliott was victorious on an oval track. The delayed win at “The Monster Mile” marked his first triumph on a track other than a road course since the NASCAR Cup Series Championship Race back in November of 2020.

Hendrick Motorsports Quartet Rounding into Form

Last season, the entire Hendrick Motorsports foursome ran extremely well. The only problem for each of Alex Bowman, Chase Elliott and William Byron was that Kyle Larson was simply in a league of his own. After early returns of the Next Gen Car displayed a much greater degree of parity to begin the 2022 season, the powerhouse teams have gradually begun to assert themselves atop the NASCAR standings. Through 11 races, no team has come anywhere close to being as impressive as HMS.

With Elliott bagging the win at Dover this past weekend, all four Hendrick Motorsports drivers have now won a race this season. For that matter, Byron has won twice, which means that HMS cars have been the class of the field in nearly half of the 11 NASCAR Cup Series races run to date. While he may have multiple wins, one could argue that Byron has actually been the least consistent of the Hendrick quartet. After all, half of his top-10 finishes this season have been wins!

Through 11 races, Bowman, Byron, Elliott and Larson have combined for five wins, 14 top-5 placings and 25 top-10s. As Elliott continues to sit atop the NASCAR Cup Series standings, Byron and Bowman ensure that Hendrick Motorsports cars occupy three of the top five spots. Larson is not far behind, sitting eighth in the points. Coming into the season, everyone knew that the Next Gen Car would require a learning curve. As the calendar turns to May, it appears that HMS is clearly a step ahead of the rest when it comes to maximizing results and performance.

Breakout Season for Ross Chastain, Trackhouse Racing Continues

In case anyone thought that Ross Chastain’s win at Circuit of the Americas earlier this season was a fluke, he doubled down two weeks ago at Talladega. Chastain led all of a single lap in the GEICO 500, but it was the only lap that mattered. He crossed the start/finish line first to score his second career win in the NASCAR Cup Series. In his first year driving the No. 1 car for Trackhouse Racing, Chastain’s breakout is well underway.

Thanks to his pair of victories, Chastain is guaranteed a spot in the NASCAR Playoffs this season no matter how many drivers ultimately win a race. Through 11 races, “The Melon Man” also sits sixth in the NASCAR standings. Clearly, it takes more than just winning a couple of races to achieve such a status, and Chastain has accomplished just that.

A third-place finish this past week at Dover marked his seventh top-5 result of the year. When one also considers the fact that he has two DNFs, Chastain has quite literally finished top-5 in 78% of the races in which he was running at the end. His 243 laps led are the fourth-most of any driver. From a team standpoint, Chastain is the only driver with a top-10 points ranking that does not drive for one of Hendrick Motorsports, Joe Gibbs Racing or Team Penske.