When the checkered flag flies Sunday at Phoenix Raceway, NASCAR will have either a first-time champ or another two-time winner.
Joey Logano was the 2018 champion and Chase Elliott won it in 2020, so one of them could join Kyle Busch as the only active two-time champions. Or Ross Chastain or Christopher Bell could end up winning their first title.
NASCAR’s Championship 4 drivers will compete against each other and the field at Phoenix, but to win the title, they don’t necessarily have to win the race — though the last seven champions did, in fact, win the season finale checkered flag. The 2022 champion will be the driver with the highest finish of the final four.
Here are our picks for NASCAR’s 2022 Cup Series champion.
Michelle's NASCAR Cup Series championship prediction
More than any season in recent memory, it genuinely seems like any of these Championship 4 drivers could win it all, and maybe that’s just because of the increased parity this season with a record-breaking number of different winners. The Championship 4 have a combined 13 wins in 35 races this season, but I’m going with the driver with the fewest checkered flags among them.
I should have followed my initial instinct at the beginning of the NASCAR playoffs and gone with Chastain as my dark-horse championship pick. I didn’t, but I’m saying he’ll win the title this weekend after finishing second (behind Chase Briscoe) at Phoenix in March. Though Chastain has just two wins compared with his fellow title contenders, he leads all Cup drivers with 14 top-5 finishes this season and is tied with Elliott with 20 top-10s. And through the first nine playoff races, he’s racked up six top-10 finishes, including top-5 finishes in the last three races with two runner-ups.
With an impressively consistent season, the No. 1 Chevrolet driver has repeatedly shown he’s willing to do anything to gain an advantage on the track, from (perhaps unwisely) running through other drivers to the wild video game move he pulled at Martinsville Speedway on Sunday to advance to the title race. After that, he surely has even more confidence, so I’m going with him in the winner-take-all race for the championship.
Final standings:
1. Ross Chastain
2. Chase Elliott
3. Joey Logano
4. Christopher Bell
Nick's NASCAR Cup Series championship prediction
It’s been a glorious week for NASCAR, as the Cup Series moves from arguably the most exciting finish in playoff history to perhaps the most wide-open race for the championship we’ve ever seen. It’s incredibly difficult to separate Logano, Elliott, Chastain and Bell, and it’s likely we see each car battling within the top-5 all day in Phoenix.
I picked Logano to win the title at the start of the playoffs, and I don’t see any reason to move off that selection now. A win in the first race in the Round of 8 allowed the No. 22 Ford team to shift its focus entirely to Phoenix three weeks ago, and Logano’s had success at Phoenix’s updated layout, winning in 2020 and posting top-3 finishes in fall 2020 and spring 2021.
Logano’s got the best average finish among all championship eligible drivers in his last seven races at the track at 6.3 — putting him well ahead of Elliott (11.7), Bell (17.0) and Chastain (18.8) — and Logano’s led 19.4 percent of all laps in that span, per driveraverages.com.
Final standings:
1. Joey Logano
2. Chase Elliott
3. Christopher Bell
4. Ross Chastain
