Four for the Phoenix fray: Young group carries momentum into Cup title clash

MARTINSVILLE, Va. — Phoenix has its four.

Christopher Bell, Ryan Blaney, William Byron and Kyle Larson — the drivers who will vie for the 2023 NASCAR Cup Series championship in Sunday’s season finale at Phoenix Raceway — make up the youngest title-eligible quartet since the elimination-style playoff format was introduced in 2014. It’s a group of four that includes:

• Two first-time Championship 4 qualifiers (Blaney, Byron)
• One past champion (Larson, 2021)
• Three organizations representing all three manufacturers
• The Cup Series’ three most recent winners (Larson, Bell and Blaney, in order)
• The most recent Phoenix winner (Byron in March)
• An average age of 28 years, 11 months, 25 days, younger than last year’s record group

For that matter, let’s include no clear-cut standout as a favorite to take home the Bill France Cup in Sunday’s championship race (3 p.m. ET, NBC, Peacock, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, NBC Sports App), with each driver building a compelling case for the title laurels.

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Blaney punctuated the final elimination bracket Sunday with a clinching victory at Martinsville Speedway, finally breaking through to his first title shot in his fifth Round of 8 appearance. His sterling performance continued a recent run of strong results, with two victories among his four top 10s in the last five weeks.

Blaney’s record at the mile-long track at Phoenix is worth examining. The 29-year-old driver has finished among the top five in four consecutive Phoenix races, and he has been runner-up the last two times there. He led roughly a third of last year’s Phoenix finale before Team Penske teammate Joey Logano — who similarly blossomed during last year’s postseason — took command to wear the 2022 crown. Blaney now has the chance to hand team owner Roger Penske back-to-back titles.

“The playoffs for us, for Joey last year and me this year, have been fairly similar,” Blaney said. “Peaking at a really good time — that’s kind of what that group did last year. We’re definitely doing that this year.”

Blaney will be carrying the banner for Ford this weekend, and Bell will have the hopes of Toyota riding on his shoulders. The pressure was off Bell and his No. 20 Joe Gibbs Racing group at Martinsville after a decisive victory the previous week at Homestead-Miami Speedway, and he finished a solid seventh to cap a more than respectable Round of 8.

Bell is the lone returning driver from last year’s Championship 4, and his eagerness to head west and better his third-place result in the 2022 standings was measurable.

“We are going to have a rocket ship,” Bell said. “I can‘t wait to get out there.”

The last two entrants in the title fray are also teammates, with Larson and Byron placing their two Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolets among the final four. At 31, Larson is the senior-most Championship 4 driver, and Byron ranks as the youngest, just 25.

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Both have their own fondness for Phoenix based on recent results. Byron won the most recent race in the Arizona desert, scoring the second of what is now a series-leading six wins this season with the No. 24 team. Larson, however, won the pole and led the most laps in that race (201 of 317) before his No. 5 Chevy slipped to a fourth-place outcome.

Larson’s veteran group has had two weeks to prepare for the finale, based on his clinching win in the Round of 8 opener at Las Vegas. Byron, however, enters the Phoenix final after a mettlesome Martinsville slog that left both his points cushion and physical state exhausted.

“I don’t know internally that we have a favorite between the two of them,” said Jeff Andrews, Hendrick Motorsports president and general manager. “We’ve been working on both of those race cars equally as hard — really, all four of our cars. But we were counting on going to Phoenix with the 24, so that’s been underway here for a couple weeks, working very hard on both of those cars to take the very best we can. The spring results (at Phoenix) are at this point, they kind of are what they are, you know? We ran good here, too, right, and obviously, we were not where we needed to be today. A lot of things have changed, and a lot of people are running better, and we’re going to have to be a whole lot better than we were today to go compete for a championship next weekend. But I believe in Hendrick Motorsports and the heart and fire in all those people. We’re ready to go.”