The 2023 NASCAR Cup Series season comes to an end on Sunday, November 5 with the Championship race at Phoenix Raceway. The Championship Four drivers competing for the title include 2021 champion Kyle Larson and four young drivers looking for their first championship trophy Christopher Bell, Ryan Blaney and William Byron.

Thanks to the sport’s winner-take-all format in the championship race it’s really hard to predict who’s going to win the title because any and everything could happen – if you watched the Craftsman Truck Series championship race on Friday night you’ll understand that (hopefully the Cup race won’t be anything like that embarrassment to the sport). Some things that come into play, though, in making predictions for this event are past success at the track, overall season and playoff success and the mentality of the drivers.

Here’s how I think things will go on Sunday …

4. Christopher Bell
You can always bank on a Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota driver in the Championship Four and this year that driver is 28-year-old Christopher Bell, who has made the Championship Four in back-to-back years. Last season, Bell finished third in the Championship Four at Phoenix and the track isn’t one of his best on the circuit – which is the main reason I have him in fourth place out of the four drivers. In seven previous races at Phoenix in the Cup Series Bell’s average finish is 14.4, which is four-to-five positions behind his three competitors in this race. However, Bell has been the best average finisher, not just of the Championship Four, but of all drivers in the sport over the last 15 races of the 2023 season with a 9.6 average finish. Bell has the advantage over Ryan Blaney and William Byron in that this won’t be his first go around in the Championship Four, but the success those other guys have at the track is too much for me to place Bell ahead of any of them.

3. William Byron
Of the Championship Four drivers this season, I honestly feel William Byron would be the rightful champion – meaning if you took the year as a whole and stripped away both the playoff format and this winner-take-all race he’d be the one most deserving of the title. Byron led all drivers with six wins this season. He also has the best average finish of these four drivers, the most top-10s of these four drivers and is tied for the most top-5s of these drivers. But I have to go with what I’ve been seeing on the track lately and what the numbers say at Phoenix and the mixture of those two things have me placing Byron as the third most likely to win the title. Byron did win the most recent race at Phoenix in the spring, but overall his average finish is slightly worse than Blaney and Kyle Larson’s at the track and his win there this year is his only top-five at the track in seven career races there. Byron also struggled last week at the short track at Martinsville Speedway, and while there aren’t really similarities between there and Phoenix you’d like to see a team clicking a little better than this No. 24 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet has been coming into the championship event.

2. Ryan Blaney
Ryan Blaney won last weekend at Martinsville Speedway in decisive fashion in what was likely the best overall race of his career to clinch a spot in the Championship Four, though he was likely going to earn his way into the Championship Four on points either way. It is Blaney who has the best overall numbers at Phoenix of the Championship Four with a 9.3 average finish in seven races at the track with four top-5s and 6 top-10s. It’s generally thought that Blaney might have had the winning car at Phoenix last season but played the good teammate and wingman to his Penske Racing brother Joey Logano, who won the 2022 title. His numbers at the track mixed with his recent hot hand have me thinking Blaney will be a huge threat on Sunday. But I can’t have him as the favorite over a guy who’s been there, done that.
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1. Kyle Larson
It is truly the experience of Kyle Larson having been through one of these winner-take-all championship races before and having come out the victor that has me putting him in the catbird’s seat for this weekend. The 2021 champ has the worst average finish of the Championship Four competitors at 15th, but that has a lot to do with the three did not finishes (DNFs) and other bad luck he’s had this season, some of it while running up front for the win like at Pocono Raceway and Texas Motor Speedway. Larson’s 1,127 laps led this season are the most of the Championship Four drivers, despite having three fewer wins this season than Byron, his Hendrick Motorsports teammate. Larson has won at Phoenix before doing so to clinch his title in 2021. In the nine previous seasons with this winner-take-all format the winner of the race has been a Championship Four driver doing so to clinch the title, so it’ll likely take doing that again on Sunday. At 30 years old, Larson is unbelievably the old vet of this foursome and his ability mixed with his history have me picking him as the driver to beat for the 2023 championship trophy.

​Kevin Harvick wraps up his 23-year no doubt first-ballot NASCAR Hall of Fame career this weekend in the Cup Series 2023 season finale at Phoenix Raceway, which happens to be the best track of his career statistically. Harvick’s done just about everything there is to do on the sport’s biggest stages from winning a championship to winning the sport’s crown jewels races like the Daytona 500, the Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway three times, the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway twice and the Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway twice. His 60 career Cup Series wins place him as the 10th most-winning driver in the sport’s 75-year history. As we say goodbye to Harvick’s racing career, though if you’re a fan know he won’t be gone long as he’ll immediately join the Fox Sports announcer’s booth at the beginning of next season, we look back on some of his greatest moments in NASCAR and since the car number he’s had the most career success in has been the No. 4 for Stewart-Haas Racing we’ve chosen his four greatest moments.

4. King of Phoenix
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Anytime you can say you’re the winningest driver in a track’s history, especially if that track has been around as long as Phoenix Raceway, you’ve accomplished quite a feat. At one point not so long ago, you could pretty much pencil Harvick’s name in as Phoenix winner in the Cup Series. It was as sure as night becoming day. Harvick has won nine times at the track, which is once out of almost every four times he’s competed at the track throughout his 23-year career. His 1,596 laps led are the most at the track, as well as his 29 top-10s and 19 top-5s. He swept both races at the track in both 2006 and 2014, showing his dominance at the track had a long span.

3. Daytona 500 Victory

For most drivers, if there is one race they most want to win in their career it’s the Daytona 500, known as the Super Bowl of the sport. Kevin Harvick’s Daytona 500 win in 2007 was one of the most dramatic and closest in the history of the legendary race as he raced future NASCAR Hall of Famer Mark Martin, one of the greatest drivers to never win the sport’s biggest race, neck-and-neck to the finish line winning by .020 seconds, which at the time was the closest finish in the history of the race, as a massive wreck broke out in the pack behind him.

2. Championship

Kevin Harvick was always a good driver at Richard Childress Racing throughout the first half of his career compiling 25 wins in 13 seasons with the organization, including his Daytona 500 win. But he had never managed to finish higher than third in the championship point standings. As soon as he moved over to Stewart-Haas Racing in 2014 it’s like everything immediately clicked for him and he went from good (he was likely already going to be a Hall of Famer at that point) to great as he tied his career high in wins with five that season, won eight poles (which was more than his entire RCR career) and won his first and only championship in the very first year of the NASCAR playoff format that saw drivers eliminated after every three races and four drivers compete for it all in the final event of the season, which at the time was at Homestead-Miami Speedway where he won the race to clinch the title. He would go on to become the winningest driver in the sport over the next few seasons compiling multiple wins every season from 2014-2020, including eight in 2018 and a career-high nine in 2020 and he was doing all of this in his late-30s to his mid-40s. I don’t think any driver in the history of NASCAR has ever had as great of a back half of their career as Harvick.

1. First Win Helps Heal an Organization and Sport

Kevin Harvick was thrust into the NASCAR Cup Series earlier than expected and under the most tragic of circumstances. When Dale Earnhardt, a seven-time champion and one of the five greatest drivers in the history of the sport, died on the final lap of the 2001 Daytona 500 car owner Richard Childress needed someone to pilot his team’s number one ride. The call went out to his Busch Series (now Xfinity Series) driver Harvick and the next week at Rockingham Speedway in North Carolina he was behind the wheel of the re-branded from No. 3 to No. 29 and re-painted racecar. What happened two weeks later at Atlanta Motor Speedway was a fairytale story that helped in at least a little way heal a hurting organization and sport when he piloted that car to Victory Lane in a tight, hard-fought battle with multiple time champion Jeff Gordon for his first career Cup Series win. It’s a moment nobody who watched the sport at that time will ever be able to forget. 

​So, there are a few different ways you can look at this. You mentioned “recorded history,” which could easily lead me to say the Chicago Cubs. After all, the Cubs went more than a century without winning a World Series, but I think many people would agree that the World Series title in 2016 and the way they won it coming back from being down 3-1 in the series to defeat the Cleveland Indians (now Guardians) in extra innings in game seven kind of wipes all that bad luck away.
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So, you can also look at which team has the longest drought in baseball without winning the World Series. And it’s actually the team the Cubs beat in 2016 – Cleveland. The Guardians franchise hasn’t won a World Series since 1948 and has been to four World Series since without winning: 1954, 1995, 1997 and the previously mentioned dramatic game seven loss to the Cubs in ’16. Seventy-five years without a World Series is pretty tough luck. Most Guardians fans have never seen their favorite team win the title and some haven’t gotten over the name change from a few years ago – though it was for the best.

Then there are teams that have never won the World Series and one of those teams just got taken off that very list last night when the Texas Rangers defeated the Arizona Diamondbacks in five games to win the title. The Rangers had been in existence for 62 years without a title before this season.

That leaves five franchises of the 30 in Major League Baseball without a title now: San Diego Padres, Seattle Mariners, Milwaukee Brewers, Colorado Rockies and Tampa Bay Rays.

The Padres and Brewers have been in existence since 1969 and with the Rangers now having won the title are the oldest franchises in MLB without a championship. The Padres are 0-2 in World Series having lost to the Detroit Tigers in 1984 and the New York Yankees in 1998. The Brewers lost the only World Series they have competed in in 1982 to the St. Louis Cardinals.

The Rockies began playing in MLB in 1993. Their only World Series appearance came in 2007, in which they were swept by the Boston Red Sox. So, the Rockies are the only team in MLB history to compete in a World Series without ever having won at least one World Series game.

The Rays have been playing in MLB since 1997 and are 0-2 in World Series having lost to the Philadelphia Phillies in 2008 and the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2020.

The Mariners have been around since 1977 and have never even been to the World Series, despite having the single-best season record in baseball history when they went 116-46 in 2001. The Mariners are the only organization in MLB history to never play in a single World Series. That could make them a worthy option for this “worst luck” title.

However, I’m going to take a different route to this question. I’m not going with a team with a three-quarters-of-a-century drought or a team that’s never won the title or even a team that’s never been to the World Series. To me “luck” doesn’t necessarily mean has never been to the promised land of the game. In fact, the team I’m picking for this “worst luck” title actually has barely gone more than two decades without winning the World Series.

I think the Los Angeles Angels have the worst luck in baseball. I understand some of you just rolled your eyes because, after all, the Angels won the World Series in 2002 – meaning nearly every one of you reading this likely remembers that happening.

But for the last decade-plus, the Angels have had the player in baseball whom most would consider the greatest player of his era: Mike Trout.

Trout is an 11-time All-Star and a three-time American League Most Valuable Player and has played in exactly one postseason series in his tenure with the Angels and that was a three-game sweep at the hands of the Kansas City Royals nearly a decade ago.

Over the last half-decade-plus, the Angels have also had a freakin’ baseball unicorn on the roster in Shohei Ohtani, the single greatest two-way player the game has ever seen in that he’s both an All-Star hitter and pitcher. Ohtani is more than likely going to win his second A.L. M.V.P. honor in the last three seasons.

Trout and Ohtani have arguably been the two best players in baseball over the last few seasons and the Angels haven’t even sniffed the postseason.

That’s because they are the most poorly run team in baseball, starting at the top with owner Arte Moreno and trickling down to the front office with general manager Perry Minasian, who somehow still holds his job he’s held since 2020 despite wasting all this talent in the lineup and constantly failing to get the kind of players (mostly pitching) to place around Trout and Ohtani to make the team successful. This is most likely going to lead to Ohtani, the most one-of-a-kind player in baseball history, to leave this offseason via free agency. Oh, by the way, the team could’ve traded Ohtani at the trade deadline this past season (before he injured his arm that will see him unable to pitch in 2024) when he was at the peak of his powers and gotten something in return for him, instead of him walking in free agency for no return. Trout seems to be held hostage by the franchise when he should be demanding the first trade out of Anaheim.

I realize much of the Angels' troubles have been self-inflicted, but I’ve always heard that sometimes you have to make your own luck and this franchise seems inept at doing so. 

- Julian Spivey