With Sonoma Raceway now in the rearview mirror, the NASCAR Cup Series has seen the last of right-hand turns in 2026. The four road/street course races on the Cup schedule were fewer and bunched up earlier compared to 2025, with none in this year’s return of The Chase.
On this week’s edition of Stat Sheet, we will crunch the numbers to see who fared the best — and worst — among Cup drivers on the road this season. For the purposes of this analysis, we will only be looking at the 35 full-time Cup drivers who competed in all four road/street course races, so part-timers like Naval Base Coronado winner Corey Heim or Project 91 driver Kevin Magnussen need not apply.
Let’s start with the positives, the best of the best on the road based on multiple metrics. Unsurprisingly, a certain New Zealander will be right in the middle of this conversation.
First, here are the top 10 Cup Series road racers in 2026, sorted by average finish.
If we went solely off average finish, the road course king of 2026 would be Ty Gibbs, who made the No. 54 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota a near-constant presence up front to the tune of a 6.25 average finish. Gibbs registered top fives on every road course except Coronado, where he still came home a respectable 15th after sustaining damage in a crash on lap 32.
Right behind Gibbs, Michael McDowell earns the distinction of being the only driver to finish inside the top 10 at all four road courses in 2026, good for an average finish of 6.5. Ryan Blaney, Kyle Larson and AJ Allmendinger also posted average finishes better than 10th at 8.5, 9 and 9.25, respectively.
One driver a bit further down on this list than expected is Shane van Gisbergen, who slotted into sixth at an average finish of 10.5. However, with a small sample size of four races, that number is significantly skewed by his 38th-place DNF at Coronado, one the main victims of the same lap-32 crash that damaged Gibbs’ car. SVG’s three other road course finishes were his two wins at Watkins Glen International and Sonoma Raceway and a runner-up showing at Circuit of the Americas.
Now, when looking at a few other statistics, van Gisbergen’s continued dominance of the road comes more into view. For instance, here is a breakdown of the laps led in the four Cup road courses:
Eighteen of the 35 Cup Series full-timers led at least one lap on a road course this season; overall, 20 drivers paced the field if you count Heim and Austin Hill. As a new course, Coronado displayed the most parity of the four courses as 13 drivers paced the field at least once. Watkins Glen, meanwhile, saw the fewest race leaders with just four.
Among the lap leaders, SVG stands out as the sole driver to lead at all four road courses and the only one to be out front for more than 100 circuits. In fact, van Gisbergen led 41.32% of all the road course laps (380) in 2026. There are just two other drivers — Tyler Reddick and Gibbs—who led more than 10% of the laps run on road courses. Coincidentally, van Gisbergen led the exact same number of laps (74) at both Watkins Glen and Sonoma.
Blaney, Larson and McDowell also posted double-digit laps led on the road courses this season.
Next, which drivers helped their points situation the most on the left and right-hand turns? Here are the 10 drivers who accrued at least 100 points in the Cup Series at road/street courses in 2026:
Despite obtaining just a single point at Coronado, van Gisbergen tops the chart with 177 points, just four markers ahead of Gibbs. Allmendinger, a three-time Cup winner on road courses, collected 153 points with Blaney and McDowell rounding out the top five.
Larson and Ryan Preece tied for sixth at 122 points, followed by Reddick with 116, Chris Buescher at 107 and Bell at 105, in spite of driving two of the four road courses with a broken wrist.
So, how was SVG able to overcome the Coronado DNF to score the most points? He did it with stage points, 31 of them to be precise. At Watkins Glen and Sonoma, van Gisbergen was dominant enough to the point that he could both flip the stage and still take the green-and-white checkered flag inside the top 10 to collect stage points.
As a result of his continued road course prowess, van Gisbergen is currently holding on to a Chase spot in 14th, 36 points above the cut line. But now, it will be up to his improvement on ovals as to whether or not he stays there.
Before we go, let’s take a brief glimpse at who struggled the most on road courses this season. Here are the 10 worst Cup drivers at road courses by average finish in 2026:
On the whole, most of the names on this list are not surprising. You’ve got drivers like Cody Ware, Josh Berry and Ricky Stenhouse Jr., all three of whom run for underfunded, single-car teams and are traditionally not great at road courses.
On the other hand, there are a few names in this top 10 that do raise eyebrows. Joey Logano and Alex Bowman, though underachieving this season, are the two names on this list who have previously won a Cup race on a road or street course. Logano triumphed in the 2015 Watkins Glen race, while Bowman won at the Chicago street course in 2024. Brad Keselowski has not won at a road course but has had great runs on this track type in the past, most notably three straight runner-up finishes at Watkins Glen in 2011, 2012 and 2013.
These three drivers will need to find a return to form soon if they wish to salvage their 2026 campaigns.
Andrew Stoddard joined Frontstretch in May of 2022 as an iRacing contributor. He is a graduate of Hampden-Sydney College, the University of Richmond, and VCU. He works as an athletic communications specialist at Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg, Va.
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