AVONDALE, Ariz. — Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series championship at Phoenix Raceway will feature the youngest group of drivers yet in the 10 years of this format, bookended by a pair of Hendrick Motorsports teammates.
Kyle Larson is the oldest driver at age 31 and William Byron is the youngest at age 25, with Ryan Blaney (29) and Christopher Bell (28) in the middle.
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Two of them — Byron and Blaney — are first-time participants, and Larson is the only former champion in the field. Bell made the final four last year for the first time.
Here’s a closer look at the field heading into the 2023 NASCAR Cup Series season finale Sunday:
William Byron
What the stats are saying
| Races | Wins | Top 5s | Top 10s | Avg. finish | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
2023 season | 35 | 6 | 14 | 20 | 11.2 |
2023 playoffs | 9 | 1 | 5 | 7 | 6.3 |
Next Gen Era at Phoenix | 3 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 8.3 |
(Note: Categories in green in all tables signify the leader or co-leader in that statistic among the four finalists.)
What he’s saying about himself
“(Martinsville, where he faced issues with his car and heat and finished 13th) was definitely kind of demoralizing, a little bit depressing. But now we’ve got a new life for our team, and this is what our goal is, to make the
What he’s saying about the competition
“All four of us race really well together. We’ve had a ton of battles with Larson, and all the way back to the Truck Series with Bell when we were teammates.”
Christopher Bell
What the stats are saying
| Races | Wins | Top 5s | Top 10s | Avg. finish | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
2023 season | 35 | 2 | 10 | 19 | 12.3 |
2023 playoffs | 9 | 1 | 4 | 6 | 8.6 |
Next Gen Era at Phoenix | 3 | 2 | 14 |
What he’s saying about himself
“My statistics have sucked at Phoenix since I’ve gotten into the Cup Series, but before I got into the Cup Series, I would have said that it’s one of — if not my best — racetracks through Trucks and Xfinity. … We’ve made gains on it every single time, and I have no reason to think we wouldn’t be better yet this time.”
What he’s saying about the competition
“We definitely have a good respectful group that doesn’t have any history of having wrecks or anything like that. I honestly think it’s a great final four, and it’s definitely Next Gen — a final four you wouldn’t have seen five years ago.”
Kyle Larson
What the stats are saying
| Races | Wins | Top 5s | Top 10s | Avg. finish | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
2023 season | 35 | 4 | 14 | 17 | 15 |
2023 playoffs | 9 | 2 | 4 | 5 | 11.9 |
Next Gen Era at Phoenix | 3 | 1 | 2 | 15.7 |
What he’s saying about himself
“You’ve just got to keep yourself in contention. If things aren’t going perfectly or you’re not leading the race with 40 or 50 to go, don’t lose hope. Continue to plug away and something may change the race to let your team pick you up. In 2021, we were running fourth. I was losing hope. And then we had a caution, had a chance for a pit stop, and the rest is history.”
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What he’s saying about the competition
“You can make a case for any of us four to win the championship. We all respect each other on the racetrack, respect each other’s abilities and the teams’ abilities. It should be a fun race. Obviously, I would love to come out on top, but I also understand it’ll be tough and everybody is going to have a shot.”
Ryan Blaney
What the stats are saying
| Races | Wins | Top 5s | Top 10s | Avg. finish | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
2023 season | 35 | 3 | 7 | 17 | 14.4 |
2023 playoffs | 9 | 2 | 3 | 5 | 10.3 |
Next Gen Era at Phoenix | 3 | 3 | 3 | 2.7 |
What he’s saying about himself
“The momentum we have coming into this weekend is huge. Confidence, peaking at the right time is huge. That’s in any sport, right? The team that peaks at the right time, you never know what can happen. It happened in baseball this year. This team is on that upside right now to we’re where we need to be at the perfect time.”
What he’s saying about the competition
“Unfortunately for you (media) guys, there is no bad blood, bitter rivalry in this
What the NBC broadcasters are saying
Dale Earnhardt Jr.: “The field for Sunday is as level as could be. Hard to determine which one of those drivers is going to come away with a championship.”
Steve Letarte: “It’s going to take an extraordinary performance because it’s such an equal field — both on pit road, on top of the pit box, on the roof, behind the wheel.”
Jeff Burton: “It’s truly a team sport, and when it gets to a one-race situation, a pit crew comes (into play). If you’re running third and go out with the lead and they win a championship, it really emphasizes how big of a team sport it is. I love the fact that it’s all one race and all that gets magnified.”
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(Photo of William Byron: Sean Gardner / Getty Images)
Jeff Gluck has been traveling on the NASCAR beat since 2007, with stops along the way at USA Today, SB Nation, NASCAR Scene magazine and a Patreon-funded site, JeffGluck.com. He's been hosting tweetups at NASCAR tracks around the country since 2009 and was named to SI's Twitter 100 (the top 100 Twitter accounts in sports) for five straight years.
