Phoenix Race Review

Ryan Blaney

Ryan Blaney is able to pick up his first win of the 2026 season at Phoenix Raceway after holding off Christopher Bell for the last 10 laps. Blaney ran up inside the top 5 for much of the race, but had multiple loose wheels that put up in the back, where he had to race his way back up to the front. An Austin Dillon caution with about 25 laps to go led to a split pit strategy, where guys like Blaney, Ty Gibbs, Kyle Larson, and more took just two tires. whereas Bell & Hamlin took 4 tires to try and be on the attack. That said, a caution on the next restart involving Zane Smith, John Hunter Nemechek, and Ty Dillon hurt Bell and Hamlin's chances of catching Blaney who moved past Gibbs and Larson on the last restart.

Blaney's win at Phoenix adds to the elite resume that Blaney has built up at the track. Since 2021, he has just two finishes outside the top 5, which was a 10th at the Spring 2021 race and a 28th place finish in the spring race in 2025 where he had an engine issue. He has 9 top 5s in that span which is just ridiculous. Blaney has excelled at the flat ovals during his career, but with his recent performance at COTA, he could be a threat to win at every race track the rest of this season. He will be a threat to win the title in the fall, so long as he doesn't DNF as much as he did last year (8 times).

Tire Issues

I'll touch on how the racing was later, but the main thing I want to focus on for now is the tire issues that we saw during this race. Several drivers had issues with tires that forced them to have to make up track position later on in the race. Kyle Busch was the most notorious one today with tire issues, as he was on pit road about 4 different times this race because of a flat right front. Shane Van Gisbergen blew a tire in the early part of stage 2 which brought out a caution. Chase Briscoe's rough start to the season continued after he blew a right front tire and hit the outside wall hard. Connor Zilisch had multiple right front tire issues and was forced to retire due to not having a break pedal. There was a sequence where Noah Gragson blew a right front, and then William Byron, Michael McDowell, and Zilisch all had a tire failure. Austin Hill and Austin Dillon also had right rear tire issues late in this race.

The main issue here is the teams trying to push the tire pressures too much to try and maximize their speed. I do believe that this was a manufacturer issue as the Chevys had most of the tire issues today. This is what fans want though with the tires, where they do wear out and you can get comers and goers. The art of tire conservation has been a lost art for a while, but we've seen guys like Ryan Blaney, Denny Hamlin, and more master this. I hope Goodyear continues to be aggressive with the tires and challenges the teams to build setups to where they aren't blowing tires every 20 laps like we saw today.

Full Results

1. Ryan Blaney
2. Christopher Bell
3. Kyle Larson
4. Ty Gibbs
5. Denny Hamlin
6. Bubba Wallace
7. William Byron
8. Tyler Reddick
9. Michael McDowell
10. Erik Jones
11. Shane Van Gisbergen
12. Todd Gilliland
13. Ryan Preece
14. Chris Buescher
15. Brad Keselowski
16. Austin Dillon
17. Kyle Busch
18. Riley Herbst
19. AJ Allmendinger
20. Carson Hocevar
21. Austin Hill
22. Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
23. Chase Elliott
24. Cody Ware
25. John Hunter Nemechek
26. Ty Dillon
27. Zane Smith
28. Ross Chastain
29. Connor Zilisch
30. Daniel Suarez
31. Joey Logano
32. Josh Berry
33. Anthony Alfredo
34. Austin Cindric
35. Cole Custer
36. Noah Gragson
37. Chase Briscoe

Christopher Bell had the fastest car today, in my opinion. He had over 100 of the fastest laps and was the fastest on the long run. Bell has been really good at Phoenix especially in the spring race. He won both the 2024 and 2025 spring race. Adam Stevens kind of threw this race away for Bell, when they took 4 tires on the final pit stop instead of 2. Bell restarted 8th and did make quick work of both Gibbs and Larson on that final run, but just ran out of time to get to Blaney. Still though, Bell had a great points day and jumped up a ton in the standings.

Hendrick Motorsports struggled a lot today. Kyle Larson rallied to finish 3rd, but he was not the 3rd fastest car today. He faded quickly in stage 1 to 13th, and he fell even further behind when he got busted for speeding. That said, Larson has made it a habit of his to get good finishes at Phoenix even with mediocre cars. William Byron was 5th to 10th for most of the race, but he got a flat tire in the latter stages of this race which put him behind. That said, Byron gambled with 2 tires late and managed a 7th place finish. Chase Elliott wasn't very fast to begin with, as he was running back in the 15th to 20th position for most of this race before being caught up in the Joey Logano crash.

Speaking of Logano, he did not have himself the best day. He scored 16 stage points and was a top 5 threat all day. That said, he threw it away twice. The first time was when he pushed Chastain in the dogleg and wiped him out, ending Cindric's and Alfredo's days in the process. Logano then tried clearing himself in front of Aj Allmendinger, but he ended up just wrecking himself which ended his day. Daniel Suarez, Josh Berry, and Chase Elliott were effectively taken out of this race as well due to that wreck. I thought Austin Cindric had a really solid race going as he collected 10 stage points and was running in the top 10 all day until that crash.

Joe Gibbs Racing was probably the best overall team today, as all 4 of their cars ran up inside the top 10 today. Ty Gibbs worked his way forward after starting 14th and ended up with a 4th place finish. This is the 2nd straight week that Gibbs has looked really good, so I'm curious if he can sustain that speed over the next few weeks. Denny Hamlin was a 3rd to 5th place car for most of the day and he ends up finishing in 5th, right where he ran. Hamlin took 4 tires late as well, but he wasn't as fast as Bell to make up the track position. Chase Briscoe, as I mentioned earlier, blew a right front tire which ended his day early. Briscoe has a 2nd place finish at Atlanta, but he has had terrible finishes outside of that race.

23XI finally had their win streak come to an end as Tyler Reddick could not make it 4 in a row. That said, Reddick ran up inside the top 5 for most of the day and came home with a solid 8th place finish. Bubba Wallace was running around 12th in the first half of the race, but the team found some adjustment which helped him get up to as high as 2nd. That's with some damage to the right front that Wallace got in the Logano and Suarez crash. Riley Herbst didn't have a super eventful day, but finished a respectable 18th place amid the chaos.

As for some other notables, Michael McDowell had a tire failure under the Noah Gragson caution, but he was able to battle back up inside the top 10 late in this race. McDowell ran right in that 10th to 15th range for much of the 2nd half so it was nice to see him get a well deserved top 10. Erik Jones was not up in the top 10 for much of this race, but he was able to move his way up through the field on much fresher tires late to get 10th. Shane Van Gisbergen was involved in 3 cautions and went a lap down during the race, but he managed to rebound to finish 11th by taking 2 tires during the final pit stop cycle. I was really impressed with SVG during the first stage, as he was able to run inside the top 15. If he can continue to run top 20 at the ovals, he'll make the Chase at the end of the regular season.

RFK Racing all finished 13th to 15th, but how they got there was very different. Ryan Preece was involved in a wreck after contact from Stenhouse sent Zilisch into him down in the dogleg. Chris Buescher used some pit strategy in stage 2 to get stage points and he then ran inside the top 10 during the first half of stage 3. That said, he was busted for speeding and had to claw his way back to. a 14th place finish. Brad Keselowski was just off this race, but he survived the carnage to get a top 15.

Todd Gilliland led FRM today as both Zane Smith and Noah Gragson were caught up in cautions. Gilliland was running around 15th for most of the race and he comes up with a solid 12th place finish. Austin Dillon had a flat tire late in the race while running in the top 10, which costed him a really goos finish. He comes home with a 16th place finish. Kyle Busch had half a dozen tire failures it seemed like, but managed to survive to somehow finish 17th. That 8 team is just lacking speed right now and I'm not really sure if that is going to be fixed. Carson Hocevar was running in the top 10 for a decent chunk of this race, but something must have happened to him late because he faded to 20th.

Ross Chastain was running up in the top 10 in the midway point of stage 3 with some pit strategy, when he just got cleaned out by Joey Logano. Chastain collected both Alfredo and Cindric with Cindric especially taking a hard shot into the outside wall. Daniel Suarez was involved in multiple wrecks today and ran top 10 early on after qualifying 4th. That said, he finished 30th place after being involved in the Joey Logano crash. Josh Berry was surprisingly quiet today, seeing as he had top 10s in both Phoenix races last year. That said, Berry was collected in the Logano caution which ended his day early.

Standings

Driver	Points	+/- vs Keselowski
Tyler Reddick	225	+125
Ryan Blaney	165	+65
Bubba Wallace	153	+53
Chase Elliott	128	+28
Shane Van Gisbergen	116	+16
Christopher Bell	113	+13
Joey Logano	113	+13
Michael McDowell	111	+11
Chris Buescher	111	+11
Kyle Larson	109	+9
William Byron	108	+8
Denny Hamlin	107	+7
AJ Allmendinger	104	+4
Carson Hocevar	103	+3
Ty Gibbs	101	+1
Brad Keselowski	100	0
Daniel Suarez	98	-2
Ryan Preece	92	-8
Zane Smith	85	-15
Kyle Busch	81	-19
Ty Dillon	76	-24
John H. Nemechek	75	-25
Ross Chastain	74	-26
Riley Herbst	72	-28
Noah Gragson	66	-34
Todd Gilliland	65	-35
Ricky Stenhouse Jr.	64	-36
Erik Jones	59	-41
Austin Dillon	56	-44
Austin Cindric	52	-48
Josh Berry	50	-50
Cody Ware	50	-50
Chase Briscoe	47	-53
Connor Zilisch	45	-55
Cole Custer	42	-58
Alex Bowman	23	-77

Christopher Bell jumped up 18 spots in the standings to 6th and was the biggest mover this week. The biggest loser is Daniel Suarez, who dropped 10 spots down to 17th.

Overall Thoughts

Phoenix Raceway has never been one of my favorite tracks on the schedule. To me, the track is not super racy and it is super difficult to make a pass mostly because of dirty air. That said, I thought the race was pretty solid overall. This was probably the best Phoenix next gen race and it was due to a couple of reasons. The first was the increased horsepower that we saw, allowing for the drivers to overcome the dirty air issues that has plagued this track. Along with this, the tires that Goodyear brought were great and they wore out quite a lot. We saw a lot of teams trying to push the issue with the tire pressures today and it bit them in the butt. While the race was predictable in who would be up front, we did see a lot of movement throughout the field. The best cars, when they fell behind, could move their way to the front.

The race tied the record for the most amount of cautions at Phoenix with 12. There weren't any in the first stage of the race with a lot of these coming about 30 laps into a run when a tire blow out occurred. My main criticism for this race is that I would've liked to see what cars would have looked on the long run, especially later in the race. That never happened though, as restarts and pit road became the focus areas of this race. Phoenix is known for the wild restarts and drivers were not scared to go 4 and 5 wide down into turn 1. That said, I never felt that race devolved into chaos. Sure, there were some big wrecks but it didn't feel like a demolition derby or a random wheel to decide which drivers would blow out tires.

While Phoenix likely won't ever be my favorite rack track on the schedule, it did provide a pretty solid race today. This was the first race where we could really gauge who the fastest teams are which look to be Penske, Joe Gibbs Racing, and 23XI so far. I believe Hendrick will be good as the season goes, but they did not look very fast today. There's still plenty of time for the teams to figure it out, but the mid season point will come up very quickly. For now, the drivers will prepare for the first mile and a half of the season at Las Vegas!

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