Crash NASCAR journalist Chad Smith goes through the field to hand out driver ratings for the Verizon 200 at Indianapolis.
Michael McDowell: 10
A dominant win to lock his team into the Playoffs.
Chase Elliott: 9
The win Chase needs to get into the Playoffs was right there, but he just came up one spot short.
Daniel Suarez: 6
A great weekend for the pole sitter was ruined with one small mistake on a pit stop, but he salvaged a 3rd place finish.
Tyler Reddick: 8
The strongest Toyota driver scored another top-five finish as they head into another road course race.
Alex Bowman: 9
This was a surprising, but much needed, top-five result for Bowman, who still needs to win to get into the Playoffs.
Chase Briscoe: 7
Briscoe had a great run to 6th, while the rest of the Stewart Haas Racing cars finished 23rd, 31st, and 39th.
Martin Truex Jr: 7
Truex had a typical quiet, but solid afternoon yet again.
Kyle Larson: 7
This has been an extremely busy week for Larson, so scoring a top-ten after an issue early in the race was quite impressive.
Christopher Bell: 7
Bell didn’t really go forward but he did spend some time up front and had a decent afternoon.
Shane Van Gisbergen: 8
The Supercars ace followed up his Chicago street course win with a solid top-ten result today in a different environment.
Chris Buescher: 7
Buescher followed up his two straight victories with an 11th place result and kept it clean.
Ty Gibbs: 6
Gibbs won the Xfinity race yesterday but had a much tougher time today, getting roughed up a couple of times by other drivers.
Ryan Blaney: 6
It was an eventful day for Blaney, who was rammed by his teammate, then dumped AJ Allmendinger for some reason.
William Byron: 9
No one will talk about it, but this was a sensational drive by Byron, coming from the very back of the field to finish inside the top 15.
Austin Cindric: 7
Cindric has always been good on road courses but he didn’t have the speed to showcase it today.
Ross Chastain: 6
Two of the Trackhouse cars were very quick, and yet again, Chastain was not one of them.
Bubba Wallace: 5
From a race perspective, Wallace did okay by keeping it clean, but others around him fared much better and made up a bunch of ground.
Denny Hamlin: 4
Hamlin led laps today but it was off sequence, and he was never a factor for much of the weekend.
Brad Keselowski: 4
A top 20 finish for Brad on a road course wasn’t terrible, but he won’t be happy about it.
Brodie Kostecki: 8
Brodie had an impressive weekend, showing speed and the ability to recover after bad fortune in his first ever NASCAR start.
Kevin Harvick: 5
Not the way the three-time Brickyard 400 winner wanted his final race to go but he did improve 15 positions on the day.
Mike Rockenfeller: 7
Aggression was not an issue for Rockenfeller, who was using up his fellow competitors when the opportunity presented itself.
AJ Allmendinger: 3
The inaugural race winner had a weekend to forget, which is a shame considering how much he looks forward to this stop on the calendar each year.
Jenson Button: 3
Button got into it with several drivers on Sunday, and often times he got the short end of the stick.
Kamui Kobayashi: 3
Kobayashi was another driver that got run into as other drivers made mistakes.
Joey Logano: 2
Logano made a fool of himself in this race last year with his dive bomb maneuver, and today was just as bad, taking out multiple drivers, including ramming the back of his teammate on the way to a 34th place finish.
Kyle Busch: 5
His great day went south late in the race, which will only motivate him even more heading into next weekend at Watkins Glen.
Keyword: NASCAR: Driver Ratings for Verizon 200 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway Road Course