Practice and qualifying for both the NASCAR Cup Series and O’Reilly Auto Parts Series will be moved two hours earlier Saturday. The O’Reilly Series is set for practice at 8:30 a.m. ET and qualifying to follow at 9:35 a.m. ET, both broadcast on ESPN Unlimited. Cup Series practice is now scheduled for 11 a.m. ET with Busch Light Pole Qualifying at 12:05 p.m. ET, with coverage on truTV, PRN Radio and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.

RELATED: Weekend schedule: Charlotte

The announcement came Friday morning as Isaias moved closer to landfall near Florida’s Gulf Coast. The storm is expected to bring heavy rain to the southeastern U.S.

Race start times currently remain unchanged for a tripleheader weekend for NASCAR’s national series.

The Craftsman Truck Series’ Ecosave 200 is set for a Friday start at 5 p.m. ET (FOX, FOX One, NASCAR Racing Network). The O’Reilly Auto Parts Series resumes its Chase postseason with the Blue Cross NC 300 on Saturday (4 p.m. ET, The CW, ESPN Unlimited, PRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio). The Cup Series hosts the Bank of America 400, the sixth of 10 races in The Chase presented by Mobil 1, with a Sunday main event (3 p.m. ET, USA Network, HBO Max, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).

The news came as NASCAR’s top circuit prepares for Sunday’s Bank of America 400 (3 p.m. ET, USA Network, HBO Max, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) at Charlotte Motor Speedway. It also answers one of the few remaining questions surrounding the Cup Series’ “Silly Season” driver movement for 2027.

RELATED: Key figures in Silly Season | Weekend schedule: Charlotte

Custer has long been connected to team owner Gene Haas, first through Haas’ partnership with Tony Stewart under the Stewart-Haas Racing banner and later with Haas Factory Team, which rebranded after Stewart’s ownership departure ahead of the 2025 season. That reorganization established HFT as a single-car effort in the Cup Series, and Custer has been its driver ever since.

“We are excited to have Cole Custer back in the 41 Haas Factory Team Chevrolet for 2027,” Haas said. “Cole is a championship-caliber driver who brings the consistency we need on a weekly basis and we are proud to continue to support him in the NASCAR Cup Series.”

Custer finished 32nd in the Cup Series standings last year, and that also represents his current ranking with five races left in the 2026 campaign. The 28-year-old California native has one top-10 finish this year, a 10th-place result in the regular-season finale at Daytona International Speedway in August.

Custer is a 15-time winner in the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series, capturing the 2023 championship for Stewart-Haas and finishing as the circuit’s runner-up three times. He also earned a Cup Series triumph at Kentucky Speedway in 2020, converting a bold four-wide pass on the final lap into a victory that helped him seal Rookie of the Year honors.

Haas Factory Team switched manufacturers from Ford to Chevrolet this season. The organization also fields a two-car effort in the O’Reilly Series, with points leader Sheldon Creed and Sam Mayer as teammates.

While plenty remains unknown at Charlotte Motor Speedway this weekend, one thing appears familiar: Toyota‘s strength on intermediate tracks. NASCAR‘s home track hasn‘t hosted a fall race on the oval in nearly a decade, but Toyota dominated before rain shortened May‘s Coca-Cola 600 and flexed its muscle again last weekend at Las Vegas. Kyle Larson‘s postseason surge, however, could pose the biggest threat yet to the manufacturer‘s recent reign.

Returning to Fastlane this year is my weekly NASCAR 36 for 36 pick, where you can come play along. It‘s a season-long points battle introduced in 2024 where strategy is the primary emphasis. With 36 chartered cars and 36 races on the 2026 schedule, players can choose each car once for the duration of the season.

MUST START
Driver: Chase Briscoe, Joe Gibbs Racing, No. 19 Toyota
Selections remaining: 2
Comment: There might not be a better driver than Briscoe currently in the Cup Series at intermediate tracks. The No. 19 team has won two of the last three races at 1.5-mile venues, including a dominant performance in Sin City. He was out front late the week before at Kansas Speedway before smacking the wall multiple times.

Driver: Denny Hamlin, Joe Gibbs Racing, No. 11 Toyota
Selections remaining: 2
Comment: With a scorching start to the 2026 season, Hamlin shouldn‘t be reprimanded for how The Chase presented by Mobil 1 has begun for the No. 11 team. Before a Lap 77 spin at Las Vegas, he had a streak of eight straight races at 1.5-mile tracks with finishes of fourth or better. That included a third-place effort in May at Charlotte after leading 75 circuits.

Driver: Tyler Reddick, 23XI Racing, No. 45 Toyota
Selections remaining: 2
Comment: Reddick recovered from an early alternator issue at Las Vegas to finish third, reminding everyone how solid the No. 45 team is at intermediates. Charlotte fits Reddick‘s wheelhouse, as he led a race-high 119 laps in May. In eight starts at the Charlotte oval, he has an average finish of 9.5, which trails only Hall of Famer Rex White among drivers who have made multiple starts in NASCAR‘s backyard.

DRIVERS TO AVOID
Driver: Joey Logano, Team Penske, No. 22 Ford
Selections remaining: 4
Comment: Penske has made strides at intermediates, scoring two top fives in the last two races. Logano, however, hasn‘t joined the party, with his last 1.5-mile top five coming in his 2025 Texas win. He finished eighth in May at Charlotte, but he didn‘t finish better than 14th in his previous five visits.

Driver: Daniel Suárez, Spire Motorsports, No. 7 Chevrolet
Selections remaining: 5
Comment: Suárez‘s crew chief Ryan Sparks threw a Hail Mary attempt in May to win the crown-jewel race. Suárez fended off a Toyota brigade and was assisted by multiple cautions before Mother Nature prematurely ended the race. The victory is Suárez‘s only finish better than 15th in the last 10 Charlotte races.

SLEEPERS OF THE WEEK
Driver: Austin Cindric, Team Penske, No. 2 Ford
Selections remaining: 4
Comment: History would tell you to stay far away from Cindric at Charlotte. In five starts, he has an average finish of 30.8, his worst among all Cup tracks. However, the fifth-year driver is amid consecutive top fives for the first time in his career, both coming at 1.5-mile venues.

Driver: Shane van Gisbergen, Trackhouse Racing, No. 97 Chevrolet
Selections remaining: 5
Comment: The road-course ace has led Trackhouse at intermediate tracks in 2026, scoring his best 1.5-mile finish at Las Vegas in ninth. In May, SVG had an average running position of 7.8 and spent 328 of 373 laps planted inside the top 10.

FEATURED MATCHUPS
Ryan Blaney vs. Joey Logano
Pick: Blaney
Comment: With a 20.1 average finish in 16 starts, Charlotte is Blaney‘s worst track on the schedule, statistically. The outlier is a dominant performance in the 2023 Coca-Cola 600, leading 163 circuits. Logano is good, not great in NASCAR‘s hub, but given recent performances at 1.5-mile tracks, Blaney gets the edge.

Kyle Larson vs. Tyler Reddick
Pick: Reddick
Comment: Reddick has defined consistency at Charlotte, while Larson has top 10s in less than 50% of his starts. With just one start remaining with the No. 5 team the rest of the way, I‘m staying clear of Larson this weekend.

Bubba Wallace vs. Carson Hocevar
Pick: Wallace
Comment: Neither driver has finished races off in the Queen City. Hocevar was in contention to win the 2025 Coca-Cola 600 until his engine expired. Wallace has been plenty fast at the quad-oval, with Toyota being the overwhelming favorite entering the weekend. Give me Wallace, even though his 23.0 average finish at Charlotte is his worst among 1.5-mile tracks.

Christopher Bell vs. Denny Hamlin
Pick: Hamlin
Comment: It‘s rare to see Hamlin make a mistake, but his Vegas spin proved costly. Meanwhile, Bell had his own mechanical gremlins, losing power steering. Both JGR drivers need an upswing performance at Charlotte. While Bell has been ultra-consistent at CMS, Hamlin has five finishes of seventh or better in the last seven Charlotte races, banking 22 top 10s in 35 starts.

MY LINEUP
Starting five: Chase Briscoe, Denny Hamlin, Tyler Reddick, Christopher Bell, Austin Cindric.
Garage: William Byron.

36 FOR 36
Pick: Ricky Stenhouse Jr., Hyak Motorsports, No. 47 Chevrolet
Comment: With only five races remaining in the 2026 season, it‘s time to get creative with these picks. Ever since Stenhouse made his Cup debut at Charlotte with Wood Brothers Racing in 2011, he‘s had a knack for the track. Dating back to 2017, the two-time O‘Reilly Auto Parts Series champion has 10 top-15 finishes in 12 Charlotte starts, including finishes of 11th and 12th in two attempts with the rebranded Hyak.

After suffering calamities in the first four postseason races, the driver of the No. 7 JR Motorsports Chevrolet is looking for a reversal of fortune in Saturday‘s Blue Cross NC 300 at Charlotte Motor Speedway (4 p.m. ET, The CW, ESPN Unlimited, PRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).

“Charlotte has been a really strong track for us over the last few years, but all of those races were in the heat of May, so it will be interesting to see how this weekend plays out,” said Allgaier, who has fallen from first to fourth in the standings since The Chase began at Darlington Raceway.

“I know that everyone on this team is ready to get there. Our Chase hasn‘t started quite like we hoped, but this group is ready to go out there and do what we‘ve done all year. There is still a lot of racing left to be done, and I feel like Charlotte is a great place to get that momentum back on our side.”

Allgaier, who trails Chase leader Sheldon Creed by 30 points with five races left, is the only former Charlotte oval winner in the field for Saturday‘s race. The last 14 races on the 1.5-mile track have produced 14 different winners.

RELATED: Weekend schedule: Charlotte | O’Reilly Auto Parts Series standings

Both second-place Carson Kvapil (19 points behind Creed) and third-place Jesse Love (21 points behind) gained ground at Allgaier‘s expense in last Saturday‘s race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

Love, the defending series champion, finished third behind race winner Corey Day and runner-up Kvapil at Las Vegas, sparking optimism for Saturday‘s race at Charlotte.

“We were really good here in the spring,” said Love, who finished second to full-time NASCAR Cup Series driver Ross Chastain in a rain-shortened race in May. “It fits our package.

“We learned some things last week in Las Vegas that we will implement in Charlotte and go from there. I think we’re struggling with some things that, if we fix for Charlotte, we’ll be in good shape.”

The top six drivers in The Chase standings remain within striking distance of Creed‘s lead. Sixth-place Sam Mayer, who has gained four positions in the standings since The Chase presented by Mobil 1 began, is 52 points behind Creed.

Honeycutt will try to expand his lead in Friday‘s Ecosave 200 (5 p.m. ET, FOX, NASCAR Racing Network, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio), as Riggs — now 37 points behind Honeycutt in second place — attempts to right his ship.

RELATED: Truck Series standings | Charlotte schedule

Riggs was running second behind Honeycutt at Kansas when he smacked the wall in the closing laps and dropped to 19th at the finish.

“I just went for it there at the end,” Riggs said. “I feel like we were kind of behind the eight ball all day long. Had rough stops on pit road, had issues. I was going for a win, had a shot at a win, and tried a little too hard. So definitely really disappointing. Really big blow to our points.

“Should have been just fine with chalking up a second-place finish instead of trying to go for the win. But at the same time, the team (Front Row Motorsports) pays me to go win races. And that’s what we did. I just have to be smarter in the long run if I’m going to get this thing. Keep my head about me a little bit better, instead of looking at just three or four laps. Got to look at the whole Chase.”

The good news for Riggs is that he and Honeycutt have created separation from the rest of the Chase field in just two races. Third-place Chandler Smith, Riggs‘ teammate, trails Honeycutt by 71 points, with fourth-place Gio Ruggiero 72 points back.

Born in Bogotá, Colombia, Calderón‘s career has seen her tackle various forms of racing such as the IndyCar Series, Formula 2 and endurance events like the Rolex 24 and the 24 Hours of Le Mans. For 2026, Calderón is back in South America, this time as a full-time competitor in the NASCAR Brasil Series.

A strong rookie NASCAR Brasil season culminated on Sept. 20 with one of Calderón‘s most significant accomplishments. After she finished fourth overall in the first race of a same-day doubleheader at Oval de Curvelo, Calderón scored a victory in the second feature, becoming the first woman to win in NASCAR Brasil history.

Calderón experienced a plethora of emotions on the podium post-race, as the journey to reach that milestone was equal parts arduous and rewarding. Now that she’s the first female NASCAR Brasil winner, Calderón hopes to serve as inspiration for other women seeking to excel in racing.

“It was a big moment,” Calderon said. “I started racing in NASCAR Brasil this year, so every track, the car and the language is all new for me. To be able to show a woman can be competitive at such a high level is incredible, and I‘m extremely thankful to [my team] SG28 [Racing]. This project is about giving women opportunities to really shine.

“I hope this means we can open different doors to keep shining and proving that women deserve a chance in this sport.”

Calderón‘s passion for sport and competition has been with her since childhood, but the idea of becoming a racer initially did not cross her mind.

That changed when Calderón‘s older sister Paula brought her to a go-kart track for the first time when she was 9. Calderón became enamored with the intense and frenetic nature of go-kart racing, convincing her to find an avenue into motorsports.

Colombia is home to just one major circuit in Autódromo de Tocancipá. Yet the country is also home to Juan Pablo Montoya, a two-time Indianapolis 500 winner, which made him a perfect role model.

When Montoya made the move to Formula 1 in 2001, Calderón was convinced to follow a similar path. This required a difficult decision to move, but Calderón was ready for the challenges ahead. She had Paula, who now serves as her manager, by her side.

The Star Mazda Championship in the early 2010a served as Calderón‘s first steppingstone toward Formula 1. As the years progressed, she earned opportunities in the FIA Formula 3 European Championship and the FIA GP3 Series. She even won her first open-wheel race at Sebring International Raceway in 2014 as part of the Florida Winter Series.

Everything Calderón did got her one step closer to Formula 1. In 2018, Sauber Motorsport, which was later rebranded to Alfa Romeo Racing, signed Calderón as its test driver, allowing her to become the first Latin American woman to pilot a Formula 1 car following a promotional drive that same year at Autódromo Hermanos Rodriguez.

Calderón departed Alfa Romeo in 2021 without making any official Formula 1 starts, but her reputation as a determined, consistent driver drew plenty of interest from teams around the world. Among them was another Indianapolis 500 winner in A.J. Foyt, who signed Calderón to drive for his IndyCar Series program in 2022 at all the road courses.

That opportunity lasted seven races; Calderón was let go from A.J. Foyt Racing following a sudden loss in funding. Not long after, Calderón obtained a lifeline from an unexpected source: international superstar and fellow Colombian Karol G.

“I found myself with no drive and no sponsors,” Calderón said. “[Karol G] found out, and she started following me on Instagram. I knew very well who she was, and was always a very big fan of her’s. I wrote her a direct message, and she replied that our paths were going to cross and that I should keep believing, dreaming and representing women in the sport.

“Two days later, her manager, who is her sister, reached out to my sister, and then she started supporting my career.”

Karol G primarily supports Calderón through her Con Cora Foundation, a non-profit organization established with the goal of empowering women in vulnerable conditions through methods that include sports. Their shared goals is one of many reasons Calderón has been proud to have Karol G‘s branding on her car the past four years.

One of the first people to congratulate Calderón on her historic NASCAR Brasil victory was Karol G herself, which was an immense source of pride. Calderón considers Karol G to be one of the most influential figures of women empowerment around the world and is determined to use her own platform to leave a similar impact on racing.

The reactions Calderón received following her NASCAR Brasil triumph only reinforced how her actions and influence have led to positive change.

“There‘s an increase in female fans in motorsports,” Calderón said. “You can see that on track; you can see that on social media. The love, the support, it‘s been more than I could ever imagine. It‘s the motivation to keep going to see that women start to believe they can be race drivers and they can do this amazing thing.

“I want to keep representing women, Latin American women around the world and show they can be whatever they want if they believe and have the passion.”

No matter where her journey takes her next, Calderón is going to remain steadfast in her mission and influence on the next generation of women in motorsports. One stop could be a potential return to active competition in the United States.

Calderón recently tested a Late Model Stock Car for MCM Racing Development, which was started by Mexican-born competitor Max Calles with the goal of giving Latin and South American drivers more opportunities. The drivers who have competed under Calles‘ banner include Eloy Falcón and Calderón‘s fellow NASCAR Brasil competitor Gabriel Casagrande.

Given that Calles also has an ARCA Menards Series program, there is a potential route for Calderón to advance up NASCAR‘s developmental ladder. She wants to take the process one step at a time so she can properly acclimate herself to the cars and the environment in the U.S.

Even with such a prestigious background, Calderón knows patience is key.

“We want to build a strong path to [the] NASCAR Cup [Series],” Calderón said. “We want to do it properly starting with late models. NASCAR is such a unique culture, and obviously the cars here are very different than the ones we drive in Brazil. It‘s a start to hopefully a path toward NASCAR Cup, which is one of our goals.”

Thinking about a possible career in the U.S. is not at the forefront of Calderón‘s focus. There are a handful of opportunities remaining this year for Calderón to take home another checkered flag in NASCAR Brasil, with the victory in September allowing her to claim the final spot in the playoffs.

Once the season concludes, Calderón will evaluate her options. NASCAR Brasil has given Calderón plenty to celebrate in 2026, but she also wants to continue exploring different avenues all while reaching as many people as possible.

Whether that involves another venture away from South America is to be determined, but she is ready for the next challenge. Calderón is no stranger to globetrotting and is willing to go to any series in any country.

The only stipulation is that Calderón wants to be competitive. A grueling career around the world molded Calderón into someone who could win in NASCAR Brasil, so she has every reason to believe she can replicate that feat anywhere.

“I‘m fortunate enough to have been able to compete in some of the toughest championships,” Calderón said. “Every day, I love this sport and my job more. In racing, you‘ve got to have the tools to be able to win. For this part of my career, I want to show that I can win, and I can perform at the highest level, not just participate.

“Of course a championship is very important, but I want to be where people want to give me a chance to perform at the highest level.”

Calderón knows the little girl who went to the go-kart track with her older sister so many years ago would be proud of the woman she’s become.

Not only has Calderón successfully blazed her own trail in motorsports, but she got to fulfill her dream of driving a Formula 1 car … all while building a professional relationship with one of the biggest musicians in the world.

Calderón is grateful for every chance she got to prove herself as a winning driver. By maintaining a presence in racing, Calderón knows she is laying the foundation for other women around the world to chase the same dreams.

RELATED: Weekend schedule | TV listings | Goodyear tire setup

NASCAR Cup Series

Race day: Sunday at 3 p.m. ET on USA Network. The categories listed below will be filled out with links as the information becomes available.

Tires: Eleven total sets — eight new sets for the race, two for practice and one for qualifying that transfers to the race.

Entry List
Qualifying Order
Practice Results 
Practice Lap Averages 
Practice Lap Times 
Starting Lineup
Pit Stalls
Stage 1 Results
Stage 2 Results
Unofficial Race Results

NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series

Race day: Saturday at 4 p.m. ET on The CW. The categories listed below will be filled out with links as the information becomes available.

Tires: Six total sets — four new sets for the race, one for practice and one for qualifying that transfers to the race.

Entry List
Qualifying Order
Practice Results
Practice Lap Averages
Practice Lap Times
Starting Lineup 
Pit Stalls
Stage 1 Results
Stage 2 Results
Unofficial Race Results

NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series

Race day: Friday at 5 p.m. ET on FOX. The categories listed below will be filled out with links as the information becomes available.

Tires: Five total sets — three new sets for the race, one for practice and one for qualifying that transfers to the race.

Entry List
Qualifying Order
Practice Results
Practice Lap Averages
Practice Lap Times
Starting Lineup 
Pit Stalls
Stage 1 Results
Stage 2 Results
Unofficial Race Results

If you want to see what insiders think about these questions, you’ve come to the right place. Welcome to “Last Call,” a new weekly article series in which a handful of NASCAR.com writers answer a hot topic from the most recent race weekend.

RELATED: Las Vegas results | Cup Series standings

With Chase Briscoe’s thrilling victory at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, the No. 19 Joe Gibbs Racing driver remains in the title hunt, but with plenty of work still to do. Then again, fellow Indiana native Tony Stewart had plenty of work to do, too, during the 2011 Chase, with the eventual NASCAR Hall of Famer winning five of 10 postseason contests to capture the championship crown. Whether Briscoe can replicate that same success en route to title glory is this week’s top question.

Can Chase Briscoe go on a Tony Stewart title run?

Pat DeCola: Can he? Sure — but “Tony Stewart run” is probably the right level of bar he’ll need to clear if he wants the title because Briscoe doesn’t have much room left for merely strong races. “Smoke” won five of the 10 Chase races in 2011; Briscoe has only one victory in the past three months, with only five weekends left this season. The Vegas winner is 84 points back at the Chase’s halfway point, so he’s actually lost ground from where he started before Darlington, despite his seemingly scalding stint since. Thus, to make this real, he probably needs to stack another two to three, maybe four wins to be in the same ballpark as Stewart’s epic run, but Charlotte and Homestead are exactly the kind of 1.5-mile tracks where the No. 19 has shown it can do that. He also has wins at two of the three remaining tracks between them, so it’s technically possible. The past few races proved Briscoe’s 2026 ceiling is certainly championship-level; it’s just that he and the No. 19 team will need to literally be flawless from here on out to make it happen.

Dustin Albino: Sitting 84 points behind the lead, Briscoe is likely the cutoff for drivers still in championship contention. The schedule sets up favorably for the No. 19 team: He has won two of the last three races at 1.5-mile tracks and was passed late at Kansas Speedway, narrowly missing a hat trick. To match his childhood hero, Briscoe would need to win four of the next five races, a streak no driver has produced in the Next Gen car. The speed is there, though, and even two wins in the final five would vault him way up the standings. If there’s one thing The Chase has made clear, it’s the value of winning. Briscoe remains championship-eligible, but even a late surge would make a Tony Stewart-esque comeback a long shot.

Zack Albert: To Dustin’s point, replicating the type of postseason pounding that Tony Stewart assembled 15 years ago would’ve required an earlier start. As it stands now, Briscoe and Co. also need two more things — 1) help and potentially 2) gamesmanship. The first part is dependent on Kyle Larson making a dramatic fade after his bulletproof start to The Chase, plus similar drops in performance from the otherwise steady Denny Hamlin, before the No. 19 team can go on a sustained tear. Sealing the deal in Stewart-like fashion, however, would require some old-fashioned head games, the kind that “Smoke” used to rattle Carl Edwards’ composure in their 2011 showdown at Homestead-Miami Speedway. Needling the opposition might be out of character for the amiable Briscoe, but he’s shown off some solid acting skills already this year.

Zach Sturniolo: Time just isn’t on Briscoe’s side to make this run happen. As everyone else has stated, there is absolutely a pathway to Briscoe overcoming the hurdles ahead of him both on the race track and in the standings. But consider the caliber of teams ahead of him currently: two-time and defending champion Kyle Larson; perennial championship contender Denny Hamlin; Christopher Bell, who hasn’t finished lower than fifth in points in five years; and two Team Penske champions in Joey Logano and Ryan Blaney. To rely upon all five of those teams suffering critical and sustained errors across the next five weeks is an extraordinarily tall task. The No. 19 team is unquestionably capable. The level of performance is there. Will the execution be there for the next five weeks? Maybe, but he’ll need a hand from others faltering.

Cameron Richardson: The big phrases in Briscoe pulling off the run are “can he do it?” and “has to do it.” Yes, Stewart started the 2011 Chase ninth, but after winning the first two races, he was already at the top of the standings. Briscoe hasn’t stacked the points early on to make anyone believe that he can rattle off 70-plus-point days for the next five weeks. The story would be different if he hadn’t crashed at Gateway and suffered the mechanical failure that parked the No. 19 Toyota in the garage late in the Bristol Night Race. The Las Vegas victory was simply a matter of staying on his feet in a 10-round fight with the five above him rather than being in a back-and-forth tilt. Briscoe will be in the mix Sunday at Charlotte and the following weekend at Phoenix, but then there is the looming Talladega, where title contenders will have their hopes dashed through no fault of their own, and Martinsville, a track that has not favored the Hoosier in his Cup tenure. Barring some miracles, there’s just no viable trend to say Briscoe is built to stop Penske’s strongholds (Phoenix, Talladega, Martinsville) or be the top dog among his teammates at Charlotte and Homestead.

Every previous season, the answer has always ultimately been, “No.” Some years have looked more promising than others, of course, and some of Denny‘s failed brushes with a breakthrough have bordered on the absurdly cruel — see last year‘s title race as Exhibit A. But for all the different ways he‘s come close, the ending has always managed to leave Hamlin as history‘s greatest driver without a championship.

That was supposed to change in 2026. Going into The Chase presented by Mobil 1, everything seemed lined up for Hamlin to cast off the weight of history and claim the same crown that all of his legendary peers on the career wins list already have. Not only was Hamlin enjoying another of his best seasons — in total defiance of Father Time, at age 45 — while he ran down employee/rival Tyler Reddick for the regular-season title (and top seed in The Chase), but the stretch-run schedule was looking absolutely perfect for his strengths: Many more intermediates and short tracks than the typical mix, and fewer road courses and drafting tracks.

Truly, the only thing standing in the way of Denny‘s first career title appeared to be his own ability to execute. And that, unfortunately, has been a big part of the problem.

As we now sit halfway through the 10-race Chase, Hamlin‘s 25-point lead on the field to begin the championship push was whittled away completely within just three races — through Bristol — and after Sunday‘s 16th-place finish at Las Vegas, he is now staring at a 40-point deficit in the standings to a suddenly dominant Kyle Larson.
Certainly, Larson has driven at an impressive rate since The Chase began. His average Driver Rating in the past five races is 117.7 — the ninth-best start by a Chase/playoff driver through five races since 2005 — and his average finish of 2.2 is the best of any such driver in that sample, beating out Joey Logano‘s average of 2.8 in the first five races of the 2014 Chase. When the competition is on a heater like that, your margin for error will suddenly get a lot smaller.

But Hamlin has also failed to take advantage of opportunities that were presented to him. At the start of The Chase at Darlington — one of his better career tracks, where he‘s won five times and is the only active Cup driver with an average finish in single-digits — Hamlin stumbled to an 18th-place finish at the Southern 500 after taking damage at mid-race. We wrote at the time that this didn‘t have to prove fatal to Hamlin‘s title hopes if he rebounded to meet expectations over the rest of The Chase, particularly in the critical stretch of three straight 1.5-mile ovals — the likes of which Hamlin had dominated all season.

But Hamlin has continued to undershoot his performance predictions throughout The Chase so far. In four of five outings, he has produced a Driver Rating below what his recent history and similar track-type affinity suggested ahead of the race, while Larson has exceeded his own predictions in four of five races. And the only time Denny didn‘t underperform, at Kansas, Larson literally rattled off a perfect 150.0 rating en route to victory, causing Hamlin‘s deficit to grow from one point to 26.

Even on Sunday, Larson began the South Point 400 with major struggles, running well outside the top 20 as the end of Stage 1 approached. This would have been a prime opportunity for polesitter Hamlin to capitalize on one of his trademark 1.5-mile tracks and eat into Larson‘s edge in the points … except that the 11 car lost the back-end in Turn 3 with nobody else around and just over a lap to go in the stage, damaging his splitter and destroying his favorable track position.

A persistent and adaptable Larson, meanwhile, ended up rallying to vie with eventual winner Chase Briscoe late before finishing second, and Hamlin was never as fast again, finishing 16th. Yet another unsatisfying run caused Hamlin‘s championship odds to dwindle even further, to just under 17% in my latest forecast model projection. It‘s the fifth consecutive week in which Hamlin‘s odds either took a dip or stayed roughly level at best:
All of which brings us to this weekend in Charlotte. It‘s the back-leg of those three straight 1.5-mile races, and it represents the second-to-last intermediate on the calendar, ahead of only the season finale at Homestead-Miami on Nov. 8. Not coincidentally, those two tracks also happen to be his highest-rated remaining tracks in the projections, and you can easily make the case that Charlotte is more important to his title chances because it represents such a fork in the road from here, a point at which he still has some chance — however slim at the moment — to win the title.

If Denny wins this week, his title odds would leap by 23.5 percentage points to 40.3% — placing him squarely back in the fight with Larson. But if he finishes outside the top five, Hamlin‘s odds would slide further into the abyss. And if Larson wins again? Then the No. 5 team would have an overwhelming 90% chance at locking down the championship. (It could easily happen, too: Larson owns the second-highest projection this week behind Briscoe, and he won here en route to the title in 2021, albeit in the spring.)

That‘s just how much of a do-or-die week it is for Hamlin. Yes, four races will remain after Charlotte, including several that do still suit his strengths. But this might be his last chance to keep Larson‘s points lead anywhere near manageable territory. Another missed opportunity here, especially if Larson keeps finishing at the front, and what once looked like the year for Denny‘s drought to finally end will quickly become just another heartbreaking chapter in his career.

NASCAR’s “RISING” docuseries returns for a second season, offering an all-access look at three of the sport’s emerging stars as they navigate pivotal moments in their careers on and off the track.

Season 2 follows NASCAR Cup Series drivers Connor Zilisch and Carson Hocevar, along with NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series driver Brenden “Butterbean” Queen. The four-episode season will unfold monthly from August through November.

RISING: Catch up on Season 1

The series brings fans beyond the weekly results and inside the personalities, challenges and ambitions shaping the next generation of NASCAR talent.

New episodes will debut on Xumo Play on the first or second Thursday of each month. Each installment will also be released on NASCAR’s YouTube channel 14 days after its Xumo Play premiere.

“RISING” Season 2 schedule

• Episode 1 — Thursday, Aug. 6: Connor Zilisch
• Episode 2 — Thursday, Sept. 3: Brenden “Butterbean” Queen
• Episode 3 — Thursday, Oct. 8: Carson Hocevar
• Episode 4 — Thursday, Nov. 5: All three drivers

Watch “RISING” Season 2 on Xumo Play here.

Check back throughout the season for each new episode and additional coverage of Zilisch, Queen and Hocevar.

Episode 3

Episode 3 of ‘RISING’ follows Carson Hocevar, rising star and controversial figure in the NASCAR Cup Series. In this clip, Hocevar talks about his view on what other people consider are “distractions” to his career. Watch the clip here:

Carson Hocevar receives a special die-cast tribute made for him after his inaugural Cup Series win earlier this season at Talladega Superspeedway. Watch the clip here:

Episode 2

Episode 2 of ‘RISING’ follows Craftsman Truck Series rookie and Kaulig Racing driver Brenden Queen. Get to know this up-and-comer — with a unique personality. Watch the clip here:

Brenden “Butterbean” Queen gets his first dose of racing at his home track, Richmond Raceway; see how he handles the pressure. Watch the clip here:

Episode 1

Before Connor Zilisch’s rise into the NASCAR Cup Series, he grew up racing go-karts — and earned quite the nickname, as detailed by family members. Watch the clip here:

In the midst of a difficult rookie season, Zilisch is just hoping to have clean races. Ride along as he drives the track, breaking down his weekly thought process. Watch the clip here:

During Charlotte Motor Speedway’s fall race weekend, NASCAR will spotlight a new pathway for fans to learn more about the NASCAR Mobility Pit Box and directly request access to the experience through NASCAR.com/MobilityPitBox, creating a new opportunity for fans to discover and participate in the program. The NASCAR.com destination provides fans with an access request form that is shared with host-track ticket offices based on event availability.

In addition, NASCAR will expand availability of the Mobility Pit Box schedule to four new race weekends in 2027. The full 2027 Mobility Pit Box schedule will include:

• Daytona International Speedway (Feb. 18-21)
• Las Vegas Motor Speedway (March 20-21)
• Darlington Raceway (April 2-4)
• Texas Motor Speedway (April 30-May 2)
• Kansas Speedway (May 8-9)
• Charlotte Motor Speedway (May 28-30)
• Nashville Superspeedway (June 4-6)
• Michigan International Speedway (June 19-20)
• Chicagoland Speedway (June 26-27)
• Sonoma Raceway (July 10-11)
• EchoPark Speedway (July 17-18)*
• Indianapolis Motor Speedway (July 24-25)
• Naval Base Coronado (July 31-Aug. 1)
• Richmond Raceway (Sept. 10-11)
• New Hampshire Motor Speedway (Sept. 25-26)
• Las Vegas Motor Speedway (Oct. 9-10)
• Charlotte Motor Speedway (Oct. 15-17)
• Phoenix Raceway (Oct. 22-24)
• Homestead-Miami Speedway (Nov. 12-14)

*Denotes new location for Mobility Pit Box

The Mobility Pit Box launched in February 2024 and was brought to life through Toyota’s commitment to “Mobility for All,” delivering a pit-road experience to hundreds of guests across the country.

The move to make the experience more directly accessible to fans comes after a successful 2025 season, when the Mobility Pit Box hosted 207 guests with mobility challenges and 546 total guests. Ninety-seven percent of surveyed guests rated their experience five stars, while 64% said they were not aware of the Mobility Pit Box until they were invited.

The NASCAR Mobility Pit Box is designed within NASCAR-regulated 15-by-15-by-15-foot pit-box dimensions and sits on pit road just feet from live pit stops. The experience includes modular seating for guests using wheelchairs and ECVs, an adjustable wheelchair ramp with powered lift, race-broadcast viewing monitors and climate assistance. NASCAR and host tracks also coordinate accessible transportation for participating guests. 

“At NASCAR, we want every fan to have the opportunity to experience the sport in a meaningful way, and the Mobility Pit Box is a great example of what that commitment looks like in action,” said Eric Nyquist, Chief Impact Officer, NASCAR. “We’ve created an experience that helps remove barriers and brings fans with mobility challenges closer to the racing they love.”

The expanded fan-access approach follows a Las Vegas experience featuring former IndyCar driver, team owner and motorsports accessibility advocate Sam Schmidt. Schmidt’s firsthand experience provides a firsthand look at the Mobility Pit Box.

“I witnessed a timing stand for 25 years as a team owner, even I was impressed. I was excited, I was happy to put the earpiece on and I was sad to leave… it’s unbelievable,” Schmidt said. “I love the attention to detail. It’s over the top, so for anyone who has never experienced a race before, they’d be able to say, ‘Wow… this is accessibility.’ ”

Fans interested in experiencing the NASCAR Mobility Pit Box can learn more and submit a request at NASCAR.com/MobilityPitBox.

MORE: Weekend schedule | How to watch NASCAR on TV

Cup Series
Single-car qualifying will occur at 12:05 p.m. ET on Saturday (truTV).

POSITION	NUMBER	DRIVER	METRIC
1	44	* BJ McLeod	41.000
2	66	* Gray Gaulding(i)	40.100
3	67	* Corey Heim(i)	39.500
4	88	Connor Zilisch #	35.000
5	51	Cody Ware	34.900
6	38	Zane Smith	33.600
7	10	Ty Dillon	31.900
8	47	Ricky Stenhouse Jr.	31.400
9	34	Todd Gilliland	30.300
10	41	Cole Custer	28.800
11	42	John Hunter Nemechek	28.400
12	1	Ross Chastain	26.700
13	21	Josh Berry	26.000
14	33	Austin Hill(i)	24.700
15	43	Erik Jones	23.800
16	4	Noah Gragson	23.600
17	6	Brad Keselowski	22.200
18	35	Riley Herbst	21.300
19	3	Austin Dillon	20.800
20	71	Michael McDowell	20.700
21	16	AJ Allmendinger	17.100
22	48	Alex Bowman	14.600
23	97	Shane van Gisbergen	11.400
24	60	Ryan Preece (C)	23.800
25	20	Christopher Bell (C)	17.000
26	7	Daniel Suárez (C)	14.300
27	54	Ty Gibbs (C)	14.300
28	17	Chris Buescher (C)	13.900
29	11	Denny Hamlin (C)	11.800
30	77	Carson Hocevar (C)	11.700
31	9	Chase Elliott (C)	8.800
32	23	Bubba Wallace (C)	8.600
33	22	Joey Logano (C)	8.200
34	24	William Byron (C)	7.800
35	2	Austin Cindric (C)	5.500
36	12	Ryan Blaney (C)	5.000
37	45	Tyler Reddick (C)	4.200
38	19	Chase Briscoe (C)	2.500
39	5	Kyle Larson (C)	1.700

O’Reilly Auto Parts Series
Single-car qualifying will occur at 8:30 a.m. ET on Saturday (ESPN Unlimited).

POSITION	NUMBER	DRIVER	METRIC
1	38	JJ Yeley	39.800
2	47	Dawson Cram	35.900
3	9	Jake Finch	33.200
4	53	TBA	32.900
5	91	Myatt Snider	31.200
6	02	Ryan Ellis	30.500
7	07	Josh Bilicki	30.000
8	55	Joey Gase	29.700
9	31	Blaine Perkins	29.500
10	92	Mason Maggio	28.900
11	45	Lavar Scott	28.100
12	42	Matt DiBenedetto	25.700
13	48	Patrick Staropoli	25.200
14	0	Garrett Smithley	25.000
15	28	Kyle Sieg	22.700
16	27	Jeb Burton	21.900
17	32	Carson Brown	21.400
18	87	Austin Green	19.500
19	44	Brennan Poole	17.300
20	26	Dean Thompson	16.900
21	24	Harrison Burton	16.400
22	39	Ryan Sieg	13.200
23	96	Anthony Alfredo	12.100
24	51	Jeremy Clements	11.200
25	18	William Sawalich	9.800
26	20	Brandon Jones (C)	28.800
27	7	Justin Allgaier (C)	25.000
28	99	Parker Retzlaff (C)	16.600
29	8	Sammy Smith (C)	13.200
30	88	Rajah Caruth (C)	10.100
31	00	Sheldon Creed (C)	9.400
32	21	Austin Hill (C)	9.300
33	54	Taylor Gray (C)	7.400
34	41	Sam Mayer (C)	6.000
35	19	Brent Crews # (C)	4.900
36	2	Jesse Love (C)	3.000
37	17	Corey Day (C)	2.200
38	1	Carson Kvapil (C)	2.000

Craftsman Truck Series
Single-truck qualifying will occur at 2:05 p.m. ET on Friday (FS2).

* Required to qualify on time
# denotes series rookie
(i) denotes ineligible for driver points
(C) denotes Chase driver or participant

Hamlin finished 16th in Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series South Point 400 after a spin mired him in traffic with damage. But also a pit-road misplay — in which Hamlin came for service rather than staying out and trapping Kyle Larson a lap down — allowed the No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports driver to extend his series lead by fighting back to second place, earning a record fifth-straight top-five finish to open the postseason.

RELATED: Cup Series standings | Charlotte weekend schedule

“Had I known that Larson was a lap down and he would have got his lap back by me pitting, I would have never turned down pit road. I don’t care what the crew chief says. I would have never turned down pit road,” Hamlin said on his podcast, posted Tuesday night. “I think if you had time to think about it and all the things, I think there’s no question that we do something different next time around.

“We took our eye off the ball for just a brief period of time, and then I took my eye off the ball at the end of that stage.”

Hamlin fired to the lead on Lap 1 after winning Saturday’s Busch Light Pole Award, pacing the first 34 laps before stopping for four tires and fuel under green. Kyle Larson, who entered Las Vegas with a 26-point advantage over Hamlin atop the standings, started sixth but plummeted eight spots during the opening stint of the 267-lapper, necessitating a lengthy green-flag stop for major adjustments. Larson spent 26 seconds in his pit stall while the Cliff Daniels-led team worked on the right-front, and once the pit cycle was complete, the defending series champion fell a lap down.

The first caution flew when Zane Smith spun in Turn 4. Hamlin, who had returned to the lead, elected to pit again for right sides only. That decision let Larson take the wave around and return to the lead lap, and he capitalized.

MORE: Hamlin talks Las Vegas

Because Hamlin was the only lead-lap car ahead of Larson, staying out would have prevented the one-lap-down cars from taking the wave-around. Instead, Larson returned to the lead lap and capitalized with 36 points on the afternoon.

But at that moment in time, Hamlin said he was unaware of Larson’s early handling issues and did not know he was a lap down. He did not place blame on his team, either.

“You got to give my team a break, too, and I got to give my team a break because they are focused on helping me get the fastest car that I can get on that day,” Hamlin said. “They’re focused on ‘what is his feedback, what are the tools we got in the toolbox to make his car as good as we can,’ and that’s what they’re focused on. They’re calling my race, they’re not sitting on the couch listening to the announcers breaking down the 5 car’s race. In the bubble of the race track, it’s really hard to put all that in perspective.”

Hamlin restarted ninth after the caution and drove back to third while eventual winner Chase Briscoe controlled the race. He was admittedly pressing, trying to capitalize on crucial stage points. With three laps left in the frame, Hamlin’s Toyota snapped around in Turns 3 and 4 despite battling a tight condition, coming to rest near the entrance of pit road. Initially, Hamlin and crew chief Chris Gayle believed the car was undamaged. But on the next restart, Hamlin felt something was significantly wrong with his No. 11 machine on the next restart, and discovered damage to both ends after the race — likely suffered when he slid over the apron.

“At the time, I didn’t think there was anything wrong with the car,” Hamlin said. “I heard it that something underneath scraped the bottom as I’m spinning coming down the track, but I realized very quickly once we got back, I knew that it wasn’t just traffic. We had a major problem with the car … It just took all the potential out of the race car out and just never could get it remotely competitive after that.

“I’m not throwing water on anyone, but there was no one that was going to run with me … I know what my car needs to feel like to win. It was definitely a race-winning car.”

Hamlin crawled back to 11th before the final-stage re-fire, saying he felt the car still had decent long-run pace but struggled in dirty air on restarts. But just before taking the green, his car cut out with a brief fuel-pickup issue, dropping him back outside the top 20. He was not sure why that happened, but the issue did not persist the rest of the race.

Hamlin finished 16th, earning just 22 points and marking his fourth finish of eight or worse in five Chase races. He lost 14 points to Larson as his deficit grew to minus 40, failing to capitalize at the track he had won the previous two Cup races. Vegas marked his first finish outside the top five on a 1.5-mile track since Charlotte Motor Speedway last May.

As the back half of The Chase arrives, the scene shifts to Charlotte this Sunday (3 p.m. ET, USA Network, HBO Max, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) — a track that could make or break Hamlin’s hopes of finally lifting the Bill France Cup.

Kahne, an 18-time NASCAR Cup Series winner, will return to full-time NASCAR competition for the first time since 2018, when health issues forced him to step away.

RELATED:  2027 Truck Series schedule | Current Truck standings

Now 46, Kahne was named one of NASCAR’s 75 Greatest Drivers in 2023 for his success across the sport’s three national series, including crown-jewel victories in the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway (2006, 2008, 2012) and the 2017 Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

The idea to return to full-time NASCAR competition came from Spire co-owner Jeff Dickerson when he and Kahne met earlier this year at the Knoxville Nationals in Iowa.

“I was pretty surprised when it happened,” Kahne said Wednesday in a Zoom teleconference. “We’d actually just finished an owner’s meeting for the High Limit Series, and me and Jeff were talking, and he brought that up. He had told me a story that him and Carson (Hocevar) were there the week before at 360 Nationals watching the racing and trying to figure out who they were going to put in one of the trucks for a full-time season, and then have the other truck. Yeah, he just asked me and, like I said, pretty surprised.

“Once I thought about it for a little while, this is like a really good opportunity for someone who hasn’t been in the sport for a period of time. To get in with a really solid truck organization, Spire Motorsports, who’s strong in all motorsports, yeah I just thought it was really cool and (I’m) excited.”

In 2025, Kahne returned to NASCAR competition for the first time in seven years, driving the No. 33 Chevrolet for Richard Childress Racing at Rockingham Speedway in the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series. Kahne was running fifth when he was collected in a crash early in the contest but rallied for a 14th-place finish.

In addition to his Cup Series success and eight wins in the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series, Kahne is a five-time Truck Series winner despite making just six starts in the series. His lone non-win came in 2010 at Pocono Raceway, where he finished second.

Since departing NASCAR full time in 2018 after competing in 25 of 36 Cup races, the Enumclaw, Washington, native has returned to his dirt-racing roots in sprint cars, including a full-season campaign in the Interstate Batteries High Limit Racing series last year. A six-time World of Outlaws champion as a team owner, Kahne earned his first career World of Outlaws sprint car win in May 2026 at Williams Grove Speedway.

MORE: Spire Motorsports team site

Ahead of his return to NASCAR in 2025, Kahne said his health was “in a good place because I don’t do this all the time. I don’t do the long races, the heat.” While Truck Series races are longer than sprint car races, they are notably shorter than their O‘Reilly Auto Parts Series and Cup Series counterparts.

“The big thing is the short races,” Kahne said of returning to Truck Series competition. “I could always make it in the Cup car. Halfway point (of the season) is when it started really kicking in as the season went, and there’s no breaks. By July, August, it just keeps adding up. The final one at Darlington, I mean, was just too much built up, could not recover, and that’s where my body was. Just knowing that these races are shorter, a lot of night races, weekends off in between on some of them, just a completely different schedule than what we had going on back then. So, yeah, I think that’ll fit me really well.” 

Following his O’Reilly appearance at Rockingham, Kahne was asked if he would consider more NASCAR racing moving forward: “I don’t know about more in the future, but I’m really glad I did this.”

Kahne‘s full-time return will begin Feb. 19 in the 2027 season opener at Daytona International Speedway.

Contributing: Staff Report

On Sunday at Connecticut’s Thompson Speedway Motorsports Park, that dream will come true.

The driver of the No. 1 USNEPower Motorsports Modified will clinch his first NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour championship when the green flag waves to start the World Series 150 (4:30 p.m. ET on NASCAR Channel and FloRacing). That doesn‘t mean the 33-year-old from Orchard Park, New York is resting on his laurels.

Quite the opposite, in fact.

ENTRY LIST: See who’s racing Sunday at Thompson

“Our mind is in a place where we‘re just going to do what we normally do every race,” Emerling said. “We‘re going to go out and try to win the thing. We‘re going to try to do the same thing that we did at Riverhead and Oswego.

“That‘s our goal, to cap off the season on a really high note at Thompson.”

Emerling, who has been a regular face at NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour events since he made his series debut in 2011 at the age of 18, has put together a career-defining season as he stands on the verge of his first championship.

He enters the Thompson finale with a career-best five victories. He‘s led a career-high 659 laps this year and leads all drivers in top fives and top 10s this season.

The success Emerling has enjoyed this year is a testament to the work the USNEPower Motorsports team, which is led by crew chief Dale Hedquist, has put in this season.

“I‘m just really proud of the whole group and the whole group effort,” Emerling said. “USNEPower, Dale Hedquist and the whole crew. These races are a full group effort. Just really proud of the group and everyone involved to be able to make this happen. It‘s really, really exciting.”

Thompson is a track where Emerling has enjoyed success, including Modified Tour victories in each of the last two seasons.

His 2025 victory was particularly impressive, because he was forced to start the race from the rear due to an unapproved adjustment. He still found his way through the field to earn a trip to Victory Lane.

Another Thompson victory Sunday to close his championship campaign would be the perfect cherry on top for what has been a dream season in NASCAR‘s oldest division.

With that in mind, Emerling said his team has put extra emphasis on preparing for Sunday‘s finale.

“We‘re racers; we just want to go do our thing,” Emerling said. “Dale, the whole group, we really loaded all of our guns up for this race. It‘s just a race we really want. We ran good at Thompson, we did have a couple wins, and we finished third there in the summer race.

“We just want to improve on that and keep the momentum going in the last race of the year.”

For Emerling and company, the goal ahead of the World Series 150 is simple: Win the race, win the championship and celebrate accordingly.

Based on what Emerling and the No. 1 team have accomplished already this season, it would be hard to bet against them Sunday evening.

“That would be absolutely incredible (to win at Thompson),” Emerling said. “At that point that would be a six-win season. That would be just awesome. That‘s what we‘re going to try to do. Just approach it like we‘ve approached every race all year and just have fun.

“The whole team really enjoys what they‘re doing, and I enjoy it. Everyone involved in the USNEPower No. 1 car enjoys what they‘re doing and has a lot of fun doing it. Keep it fun, do our thing and compete for a win.”

Five races ago, Kyle Larson was 55 points behind Denny Hamlin. Five races later, he leads him by 40.

That’s a 95-point reversal, built piece by piece over five races.

If one number captures the first half of The 2026 Chase presented by Mobil 1 as the heralded postseason format makes its refreshed return this season, it might be that.

The defending champion Larson entered as a wayward No. 7 seed and has since flipped the entire season on its head, finishing fifth, first, second, first and second so far. He’s turned what appeared to be a significant early deficit both in points and aura into the largest championship lead of The Chase — and growing.

Larson’s run has been nothing short of dominant. It has also been informative.

Five races are enough to reveal trends, separate hot streaks from noise and expose which teams have elevated their game when the points matter most. They are also enough to remind us just how much can still change with five races left.

Let’s dig in, with stats courtesy of Racing Insights.

Larson didn’t just get hot — he changed the entire 2026 narrative

The No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet driver’s 2.2 average finish through Darlington Raceway, World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway, Bristol Motor Speedway, Kansas Speedway and Las Vegas Motor Speedway is the best through the first five races of The Chase since the format debuted in 2004, and his 273 points over that stretch are the most anyone has scored in a five-race span this year.

The contrast with his regular season is even more striking.

Larson averaged just 27.85 points per race before The Chase, with questions swirling about whether the team had it this year or was perhaps experiencing a championship hangover. He’s since put those questions very much to rest, averaging 54.6 through the first half here — nearly double the production rate.

Racing Insights’ championship model has followed suit. Larson entered The Chase with an 11.9% title probability, behind Hamlin at 40.5% and even Ty Gibbs at 12.0%. After Las Vegas, Larson is up to 46.3%, while Hamlin sits at 32.5% and Christopher Bell is next at 8.6%. Nobody else is above 3.4%.

That is about as close to seizing control in five races as one can get.

It is not the same thing, however, as finishing the job.

MORE: Analysis: Larson’s resilience puts No. 5 team in championship control

Chaos hasn’t produced parity, but the opposite

The first half of The Chase has been volatile almost everywhere except Larson’s results column. Ten of the 16 Chase drivers had a documented issue at Darlington right from the jump. Fourteen did in a memorably messy afternoon at St. Louis. Eight encountered trouble at Bristol, six at Kansas and nine at Las Vegas.

That is 47 of 80 possible Chase-driver race appearances — nearly 59% — involving an incident, mechanical problem, pit-road mistake or other significant adversity. And somehow, while all that has been happening, the championship has become more top-heavy.

At the reset, five drivers were more than a maximum race’s worth of points behind the leader. That figure grew to seven after Darlington, eight after St. Louis, nine after Bristol, 12 after Kansas, and stayed at 12 after Las Vegas. The No. 1 seed Hamlin is already 40 points back. Bell is 55 behind, Joey Logano 71. From Ryan Blaney in fifth on down, every driver trails Larson by more than the maximum 76 points available in a single race.

So the lesson isn’t that the contenders are avoiding trouble — nobody is. The separation has come from what happens after the trouble arrives.

Larson fell a lap down at Las Vegas after an extended green-flag stop for major adjustments and still finished second. Tyler Reddick changed a battery and finished third. Bubba Wallace overcame a pit-road penalty and finished eighth. It’s just that Larson and Co. are really the only ones who have rebounded from everything thrown at them … so far.

That does not mean that will continue to be the case (now, having said that, the No. 5 team does appear to be as locked in as ever at the moment, so good luck).

But clearly, in a cumulative Chase, damage limitation is becoming a championship skill in its own right.

Some drivers have become different versions of themselves

Larson’s jump is the loudest, but it is hardly the only one.

Logano has gone from 27.27 points per race during the regular season to 42.4 in The Chase. Bell has climbed from 29.15 to 42.6. Austin Cindric has improved from 24.27 to 37.0, while Wallace and Chase Briscoe have increased their scoring rates, too.

Cindric might be the most surprising name in that group, and his 8.0 average finish through five Chase races trails only Larson. His runner-up finish at Kansas, followed by a fourth at Las Vegas, marked the first consecutive top-five finishes of his Cup career.

Bell has taken a much stranger route to strong production. He has already absorbed finishes of 19th and 23rd — and still ranks second only to Larson in total Chase points.

Hamlin offers the inverse, remaining second in the championship while actually scoring 3.9 fewer points per race than he did during the regular season.

Then there’s William Byron, whose Chase began with a 37th-place finish at Darlington, to which he answered with four consecutive top 10s, yet remains 12th and 160 points back despite being the only driver to finish inside the top 10 in all seven 1.5-mile races this season.

That may be the cruelest lesson of the first five races: one disastrous afternoon can be remarkably difficult to erase.

Now the schedule changes the exam

The first five races have told us plenty, and the next five are almost purpose-built to challenge our assumptions.

Charlotte Motor Speedway, Phoenix Raceway, Talladega Superspeedway, Martinsville Speedway and Homestead-Miami Speedway make up the closing stretch, offering nothing but classic NASCAR racing left: a 1.5-mile oval, a 1-mile flat track, a superspeedway, a half-mile paperclip and another 1.5-mile oval to (most likely) settle the championship.

And while Larson owned the first half of this thing, the remaining-track history tilts toward several of the drivers chasing him.

Hamlin has 14 career wins across the five remaining tracks, including nine at the final two. Logano has 10 combined victories at those venues, Blaney eight and Chase Elliott, who still feels a little too quiet, six. Larson, Bell and Byron each have five.

MORE: Cup Series schedule

Sunday’s race at Charlotte (3 p.m. ET, USA Network, HBO Max, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) immediately raises some unknowns. The oval returns to The Chase for the first time since 2017, and 10 different drivers have won the last 10 Cup races there. Sunday will also mark the first scheduled 400-mile Cup race at Charlotte since 1965.

Then comes the mercurial Talladega, followed immediately by Martinsville, where Hamlin’s six victories are the most any Chase driver owns at any remaining track.

And if the championship is still up for grabs when everyone arrives at Homestead, it will end back on a 1.5-mile track, where Hamlin again owns a field-best 4.57 average finish at those venues this season and Larson, Byron, Briscoe and others have built compelling statistical cases of their own.

Five races ago, Larson was chasing Hamlin; now everybody’s looking up at Larson. A month and change was enough to turn a 55-point deficit and a whole lot of preconceived notions into a 40-point lead and a whole lot of uncertainty.

Five more are enough to turn all of the above on its head, too.

During the latest episode of the “Hauler Talk” podcast, Mike Forde, vice president of racing communications, said teams are allowed to use clear substances to help improve traction in the pits for cars and pit crews. But at Las Vegas, a white substance appeared in some stalls and could have impacted officiating to determine whether a car is positioned correctly in its box.

RELATED: Las Vegas results | Chase Report: Where we stand post-Las Vegas

“If it’s a white substance that extends past the lines or especially that outward line, that is going to affect our equipment,” Forde said. “So you don’t want to interfere with the technology that we use to call penalties.”

Amanda Ellis, senior director of racing communications, noted that NASCAR Cup Series teams have been requesting approval to clean off compounds in their pit stalls before races dating to last year because of discoloration.

There’s a lengthy history of substances being used in the pits by teams, including pouring carbonated beverages in pit stalls for better traction.

Forde said NASCAR was exploring if the nearly 100-degree temperature in Las Vegas affected the substances in the pit stalls this weekend.

MORE: Charlotte schedule

“We don’t have a list of chemicals or products that you’re allowed to use, but this one was something that has been used before, and why it turned the color it did is still being looked at,” Forde said.

Other topics covered during the 72nd episode of “Hauler Talk,” which explores competition issues in NASCAR:

— The disqualification of Brandon Jones’ No. 20 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota for missing lug nuts after a crash in the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series race.

— The last-lap incident with Kyle Larson that led to Tyler Reddick taking a detour through the pits, and how speed limit rules are applied in those instances.

— How the damage to Larson’s No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet was assessed for post-race inspection procedures.

— Why there was no yellow flag for Denny Hamlin’s spin near the end of Stage 1.

— What happened to the restart order when Hamlin’s car lost fuel pressure while lining up.

— NASCAR’s return to the Charlotte Motor Speedway oval in the Chase presented by Mobil 1.

Click on the embed below to listen or search for “Hauler Talk” wherever you download podcasts to hear it on your phone, tablet or mobile device.

Nate Ryan has written about NASCAR since 1996 while working at the San Bernardino Sun, Richmond Times-Dispatch, USA Today Co. and for the past 10 years at NBC Sports Digital. He is a contributor to the “Hauler Talk” show on the NASCAR Podcast Network. He has also covered various other motorsports, including the IndyCar and IMSA series.

Thompson Speedway Motorsports Park

• Entry list

Along with the pivot from the road-course/oval combination of the Roval comes a familiar, proven tire compound from Goodyear Racing on the intermediate oval.

MORE: Cup Series standings | Charlotte weekend schedule

Sunday’s Bank of America 400 (3 p.m. ET, USA Network, HBO Max, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) will feature the same Goodyear Racing Eagle rubber that has been used in each of the last two races, at Kansas Speedway and Las Vegas Motor Speedway, respectively, as the Cup Series charges into the second half of The Chase presented by Mobil 1. This tire setup was also featured in the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte in May.

“After two weeks of running these tires at similar intermediate tracks, Cup Series teams come to Charlotte on a very familiar Goodyear Racing Eagle package,” Rick Heinrich, Goodyear NASCAR product manager, said in a release. “We now enter the final stretch of the season, with all three national series racing every weekend. With everything on the line in the run up to the Championship Weekend, our job is to give teams tire setups that deliver the performance and reliability they need while contributing to exciting racing.”

The NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series and the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series also return to action this weekend, with trucks slated for a Friday feature (5 p.m. ET, FOX, FOX One, NASCAR Racing Network Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) and O’Reilly cars hitting the track Saturday (4 p.m. ET, The CW, ESPN Unlimited, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio). Both series will utilize the same tire setups used in their Memorial Day Weekend events as well.

Tire allotments for each team competing this weekend:

• Cup Series: 11 total sets — 8 new sets for the race, 1 for qualifying, which transfers to the race and 2 for practice.
• O’Reilly Auto Parts Series: 6 total sets — 4 new sets for the race, 1 for qualifying, which transfers to the race and 1 for practice.
• Craftsman Truck Series: 5 total sets — 3 new sets for the race, 1 for qualifying, which transfers to the race and 1 for practice.

The date was Feb. 17, 2019. The location was Daytona International Speedway, where she was attending the Daytona 500 for the first time.

By the time the day was over, Mary Jane‘s life and future had been changed.

“My dad always loved NASCAR. He grew up watching it,” she explained. “We went to the Daytona 500 in Florida in 2019, and I fell in love with it. I loved it … There were cars crashing (and) on fire, the adrenaline rush I got from watching the race, I was all about it.

“I came to my parents and I was like, ‘I want to be a NASCAR driver.‘”

Fast-forward to 2026, and the 18-year-old from Johnstown, Colorado is well on her way to achieving her goal.

After spending several seasons racing karts and later Legend cars, Mary Jane made the jump to late models this season with MKM Racing Development. Competing at Hickory Motor Speedway in the limited late model class, she made history by becoming the first female competitor to win a track championship at the historic 0.363-mile asphalt oval.

“Honestly, it felt super surreal and a little bit unreal when I won it,” Mary Jane said. “It felt amazing, I feel like is the best way to put it. It‘s such a big thing, and I still think I‘m learning how to understand how big of a thing it is.

“It just shows anything is possible when you put the work into it, and it shows that females can do it, too. It‘s an honor to be the first female to win the championship at Hickory.”

Mary Jane didn‘t stop there. She also captured the championship in Hickory‘s Paramount Kia Big 10 Limited Late Model Series, a 10-race miniseries featuring the 50-lap limited late model events on the track‘s schedule.

Mary Jane also collected two additional accolades from NASCAR by earning the NASCAR Local Racing Series Powered by O‘Reilly Auto Parts Southeast Division I Rookie of the Year Award as well as the North Carolina State Rookie of the Year Award.

She did all that while also competing in the Toyota GR Cup Series, where she gained experience on road courses.

“When I first started karting, I never would have thought this would be my reality. I‘m so blessed and so grateful that it can be my reality and that it is,” said Mary Jane, who drove a late model for the first time a few weeks before the Hickory Motor Speedway season opener in March. “It‘s definitely a shock, every change, even getting into late models. Once we finished the Hickory (season), every single time it‘s a shock of where I‘m at and that this is my reality. I‘m so grateful to be able to pursue what I love and actually chase after those dreams and make them my reality.”

The success Mary Jane enjoyed in her first full season of late model racing reflects the detail of her craft.

She‘s made racing her life, so much so that, with the support of her family, she moved to North Carolina from Colorado by herself at 16.

“I moved across the country to chase these dreams,” Mary Jane said. “It was a hard change to move (away) from my family and my friends and what I would say was my regular and kind of starting over somewhere new.”

A major key to her success this season is MKM Racing Development and team owner Michael Klein, who has more than 20 years of experience at the top levels of NASCAR.

A former jackman in the NASCAR Cup Series who was part of Martin Truex Jr.‘s NASCAR Cup Series championship team in 2017, Klein has put extra emphasis on making sure Mary Jane has all the tools she needs to be successful long term.

“I was under a driver development program, and they put me with all the teams,” Mary Jane said. “They connected me with Michael, and I‘m so grateful for that. Working with Michael is great. He‘s very patient, and he takes a really good approach to everything.

“He‘ll teach me lessons on track and outside of the track. He teaches me how I should represent myself and everything like that. They are very hands on, too. I like to learn about the car, so they‘ll spend the time in the shop with me working on how I can learn about the car. They‘ll talk me through the changes and everything.

“They take the time to not just make sure I have a fast race car and teach me how to be faster on track. They‘ll teach me about the race car, which I really appreciate.”

Klein‘s goal isn‘t to rush Mary Jane into the ARCA Menards Series or NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series. Instead, the goal is for a slow, methodical approach that will allow her to gain ample seat time and teach her the fundamentals she‘ll need when the right time for the next step arrives.

“The development plan for her is to be able to understand cars and have all the experience to have been there and seen it, so when she gets to those top levels, she can immediately perform so she‘s not out there spending multiple years just trying to get her feet under her,” Klein said. “If she keeps with the same work ethic the way she is doing and keeps learning and gaining experience and putting the time in, she‘s going to be just fine.”

When Mary Jane joined MKM Racing Development this year, the team laid out a four-year plan. With Year 1 now effectively behind them, Klein said Year 2 will look similar … but also very different.

The tentative plan in 2027 is for Mary Jane to compete in at least 50 late model stock and limited late model races across the Southeast at a variety of tracks, where she‘ll be forced to adapt and adjust her driving style. Such a skill is pivotal.

“We still need to learn a lot of race craft and get some of that race-craft experience,” Klein said. “When I say race craft, I‘m talking about seeing multiple different tracks, getting in a lot of different super tight positions. Primarily the car count at Hickory is 12 to 15 cars usually in a race, so we‘re going to get her to some of the bigger tracks with some of the bigger events and stiffen up some of the competition, as well.

“I think the eyesight of seeing a lot of different things and running not only limited late models, but late model stocks, and we‘re going to get some CARS Tour races in there, but being able to do that with multiple different vehicles racing around a lot of different talented people at different tracks is going to gain her a lot of experience to be able to learn that race craft.”

Mary Jane and Klein consider the 2026 season a success, but also just one step. Next season, Mary Jane wants to continue learning and proving she belongs.

“We don‘t want to get her ready to be in an ARCA car to go out and run 10th,” Klein said. “We want to do all the development and the training down here and have been there, seen it and know it.

“We want her to be able to know exactly what each adjustment is going to feel like to where she can start asking for adjustments, as well. What that is going to translate to, when she goes to ARCA or Trucks, is she‘ll be able to contend for podiums right out of the gate in her first couple races.”

For now, Mary Jane will soak in the fact that, in her first season racing late models, she made history at one of NASCAR‘s oldest sanctioned tracks.

She‘ll enjoy knowing her name will forever be linked to legendary drivers like fellow Hickory Motor Speedway champions Ned Jarrett, Ralph Earnhardt, Junior Johnson, Harry Gant and Jack Ingram.

She earned her place in history, but she‘s far from finished.

“I think everybody has a different path, and we all have the same end goal,” Mary Jane said. “It gives me so much confidence that I really can do this, and I can make it. It just makes me so driven to make that my reality.”

RELATED: Cup Series Chase schedule | Cup Series standings

Analysis: Larson somehow made a second-place run feel like yet another flex. An extended green-flag stop for major adjustments dropped the No. 5 a lap down early at Las Vegas, yet he took the wave-around, steadily worked his way back through the field and was, naturally, right on Briscoe’s bumper with the race on the line by the final lap. Larson bounced off the Turn 4 wall trying to get there, took contact from Reddick and still crossed the line second. That makes five straight top-five finishes to open The Chase with an average finish of 2.2, the best five-race postseason start on record, and his championship lead is now a healthy 40 points. Charlotte produced a Stage 1 win and fifth-place finish in May, so good luck cooling him off. At this point, even Larson’s problem days are becoming everyone else’s headache.

Analysis: After all the pre-race hype, Las Vegas finally found a way to make Hamlin look mortal on a 1.5-mile track. He led from the pole early and spun by himself from fourth late in Stage 1, but rallied toward the front before encountering a fuel-pressure issue that sent him to the rear before eventually finishing 16th. It ended a remarkable run of eight consecutive top-five finishes on intermediates, but Hamlin still finished on the lead lap for the 30th consecutive race, extending his Cup record. More importantly, one messy afternoon isn’t enough to undo the larger body of work that still has him second here and second in The Chase, 40 points behind Larson. He finished third at Charlotte in May and won Stage 2, and while the hunter lost some ground in Vegas, the hunt itself remains very much alive.

Analysis: Turns out Kansas wasn’t the one that got away so much as a warning shot. One week after leading Larson late before fading to fourth, Briscoe went to Las Vegas, swept both stages, led 175 laps and finished the job with a 75-point performance. He controlled the final 40 laps, survived late charges from Bubba Wallace and Larson and emphatically backed up what the No. 19 showed at Kansas. Even Charlotte offers more encouragement than Briscoe’s spring result suggests: he ran second, third and fourth in the three stages of the Coca-Cola 600 before a late crash left him saddled 34th. The standings still say he’s 84 points behind Larson, which feels steep. The last two races suggest Briscoe might be one of the few cars capable of doing something about it, and it’s perhaps a much, much closer race than the numbers suggest.

Analysis: The 23rd-place finish is nearly useless for describing Bell’s Vegas race because it hardly tells the story. He finished second in Stage 1, third in Stage 2 and spent much of the afternoon among the handful of cars capable of challenging his teammate Briscoe before reporting a power-steering problem. An unscheduled stop under the Stage 2 caution to address it effectively ended any hope of the finish matching the performance. So yes, he slips a spot here, but not because the No. 20 suddenly lost its speed. Bell remains third in The Chase, only 55 points behind Larson, and Charlotte was similarly strong in May when he finished second despite two pit-road penalties. Eventually, these almost-days need to become something more. The car keeps giving him the opportunity, but time is running dry.

Analysis: For the first time all year, Blaney has consecutive top-five finishes — which is shocking — but it’s notable they came during this intermediate stretch, which Team Penske has really elevated its collective game for. He started 20th at Vegas, steadily marched forward, scored points in both stages and finished fifth after again showing particularly strong long-run speed. Kansas suggested Team Penske had found something; Vegas, where all three Penske cars finished in the top 10, made the argument considerably stronger. Blaney is now fifth in The Chase, 80 points behind Larson, after spending several weeks running much better than his results suggested. Charlotte brought a P7 in May despite a bad early pit stop, and now that the results sheet is finally starting to tell the same story as the race car, a clean closeout over the next five races could result in title No. 2.

Analysis: Logano’s Vegas afternoon wasn’t spectacular, but it was useful — and Team Penske will happily take that combination on an intermediate. The three-time champ started 23rd, worked his way forward, briefly surged from eighth to fourth on one restart, scored Stage 2 points and finished 10th as all three Penske cars landed inside the top 10. The No. 22 Ford still lacked the complete short-run/long-run balance Logano would ideally love to have, but the organization’s intermediate program looks considerably healthier than it did a few weeks ago. He remains fourth in The Chase, 71 points back, despite sitting sixth here. Nobody needs reminding what happens when Logano stays within striking distance long enough.

Analysis: There he is. Reddick’s third-place finish at Las Vegas, while still frustrating, was easily his most encouraging afternoon in weeks, and naturally it still required surviving an alternator concern, an unscheduled battery change and contact with Larson coming off the final corner. The No. 45 worked all the way back into the fight anyway, briefly looked capable of stealing second and finally resembled the driver who spent much of 2026 setting the pace for everybody else. Reddick himself wasn’t especially impressed — “Whoop-de-doo,” was his assessment of gaining five points — because at 106 tallies behind Larson, podium finishes aren’t really the currency he needs anymore. Vegas was progress, but Charlotte needs to be something closer to a statement.

Analysis: Two races ago, Cindric had never finished in the top five on a 1.5-mile track. He’s now done it twice in eight days. The Kansas runner-up was followed by fourth at Las Vegas, despite a 22.7-second Stage 1 pit stop after the jackman fell over the front-tire changer, forcing Cindric to drive back through the field. He did exactly that, finished second in Stage 2 and spent the closing portion of the race firmly among the contenders. It’s also the first time in his Cup career he has posted back-to-back top-five finishes … anywhere. Charlotte went very differently in May, when an early spin and subsequent contact left him 38th, but the intermediate version of Cindric showing up now looks like an entirely different driver.

Analysis: At some point, the results have to cost him something here as Gibbs continues to slip after starting the postseason looking like a possible title contender. No. 54 had speed again at Las Vegas — he started on the front row and ran second during the opening green-flag cycle — but a pit-road speeding penalty knocked the No. 54 backward, and he never completely recovered, finishing 17th for the second consecutive week. Kansas was largely circumstance; Vegas included considerably more self-inflicted damage. None of that erases a season in which NASCAR Insights has consistently rated Gibbs among the strongest passers and defenders in the field, and Charlotte produced a sixth-place finish in May. He’ll need to capitalize on that in a hurry; The Chase is halfway over now, Gibbs is 110 points behind Larson and more experienced drivers around him are converting their speed into finishes. 

Analysis: Byron officially has one of the more intriguing stories to follow in The Chase. No. 24 finished sixth at Las Vegas for his fourth consecutive top 10 since the Darlington disaster, and he remains the only driver in the field to finish inside the top 10 in every 1.5-mile race this season. That’s a particularly useful distinction with another one immediately ahead and the final race of the season, when a champion will likely be decided, being one as well. The 160-point deficit means the championship comeback remains a very different conversation from the Power Rankings comeback, but there’s enough happening here that the door feels open again. It’ll be interesting to see where this team winds up in the standings.

Analysis: Wallace’s Chase has quietly become pretty respectable again, despite the minor rankings dip. Seventh at Bristol, ninth at Kansas and now eighth at Las Vegas gives the No. 23 three consecutive top 10s, with Sunday’s result coming despite an equipment-interference penalty at the first stage break. He was legitimately in the mix, too, running second late before Larson and Reddick eventually worked past him. The problem is that “pretty respectable” only goes so far when Larson is 137 points up the road and still gaining ground. Charlotte wasn’t especially kind in May, when Wallace finished 22nd, but the team’s current version looks considerably steadier. So, the floor is back, but The Chase requires Wallace to find the ceiling now if a title is in the mix.

Analysis: Elliott is at least beginning to put something together. Eighth at Kansas followed by seventh at Las Vegas gives him consecutive top 10s for the first time in this Chase, and the No. 9 scored Stage 2 points Sunday while spending much of the middle portion of the race around the front half of the top 10. It’s hardly enough to erase a 163-point deficit, but after the way the postseason began, competent Sundays count as progress. Charlotte offers a less pleasant recent memory: Elliott spun and hit the inside wall in May, finishing 37th, and it may be a slight downgrade for him that the fall race is no longer on the Roval layout. Hendrick currently has Larson controlling the championship and Byron steadily climbing these rankings; Elliott’s next task is making sure the organization’s resurgence includes him, too.

Analysis: Another week, another result that undersells at least part of Hocevar’s race. He scored Stage 1 points at Las Vegas and was running second during the second green-flag cycle before a corded tire forced an unscheduled stop and dropped him from the fight. He eventually recovered to 12th — a considerable improvement over the Kansas wreck — but not enough to stop another small slide here. There’s a frustrating theme developing for No. 77: The speed keeps appearing, and something keeps preventing the finish from fully matching it. Charlotte was similar in May, when another tire issue interrupted his afternoon on the way to 23rd. The No. 77 remains capable of showing up near the front almost anywhere. Staying there has become the more important skill and one he’ll look to work on in 2027.

Analysis: Suárez has become weirdly, almost impressively consistent: 14th at Bristol, 14th at Kansas, 14th at Las Vegas. That’s not exactly the kind of streak that changes a championship, especially with the No. 7 now 195 points behind Larson, but it has at least stopped the bleeding after The Chase began much rougher. Now comes Charlotte, where Suárez authored one of the strangest and best evenings of his season in May. He spent 182 laps one lap down, needed two separate free passes, jumped from 14th to the lead on a two-tire call and held it through multiple weather interruptions to win the crown-jewel Coca-Cola 600. The circumstances … probably aren’t repeatable, but the reminder that this team can still produce something completely unexpected certainly is, and that’s what they’ll need.

Analysis: Better than Kansas, but the bar wasn’t especially high. Buescher spent more of Las Vegas around the edge of the top 10, scored Stage 2 points and finished 13th, a respectable enough rebound from 23rd the week before. “Respectable” is also becoming the problem, though. He’s now 196 points behind Larson with five races remaining, and the No. 17 has spent too much of the season looking capable of more than the results ultimately show. Charlotte didn’t provide much relief in May, either, when late contact and a spin helped send him to 30th.

Analysis: The hanging-around act finally took a pretty substantial hit. After three top 10s in the first four Chase races, Preece struggled throughout Las Vegas, failed to score stage points and finished 28th after reporting a possible right-front tire issue late in Stage 2. That dropped him to 200 points behind Larson and last among the 16 Chase drivers. Charlotte isn’t an obvious reset button, either; Preece finished 33rd there in May. His Chase had been considerably better than the standings suggested for several weeks, but Vegas looked much more like a reflection of the standings. With five races left, he’ll need another one of those results nobody sees coming. At least one, really.

See which teams are welcoming visitors for autograph sessions, live radio shows, sponsor activations and more. If you are coming to the Charlotte area, save this page for your race-weekend planning!

NOTE: Bookmark the websites below for the latest team news, highlights, interviews, features from NASCAR.com writers and more exclusive content.

RELATED: Buy Charlotte tickets now!

RFK Racing: Blue Buffalo Day
When: Oct. 7 from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. ET
Where: 4202 Roush Place, Concord, N.C., 28027
Participating: Ryan Preece (and his dog)
More information: Click here.

Legacy Motor Club
When: Oct. 8 from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. ET
Where: 310 W. Aviation Dr., Statesville, N.C., 28677
Participating: Erik Jones, Jimmie Johnson, Matt Kenseth, Richard Petty (plus other appearances)
More information: Click here.

Niece Motorsports
When: Oct. 8 from noon to 4 p.m. ET
Where: 3310 S. Main St., Salisbury, N.C., 28147
Participating: Ross Chastain, Ricky Stenhouse Jr., Landen Lewis, Ron Hornaday, Andrés Pérez, Tyler Reif, Parker Eatmon, Connor Jones, Connor Hall, Donovan Strauss, Ben Maier, Matt Mills
More information: Click here.

Richard Childress Racing
When: Oct. 9 from 8 a.m. ET to 3 p.m. ET
Where: 236 Industrial Dr., Lexington, N.C., 27295
Participating: TBD
More information: Click here.

Joe Gibbs Racing
When: Oct. 9 from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. ET
Where: 13415 Reese Blvd. W., Huntersville, N.C., 28078
Participating: Cup Series, O’Reilly Auto Parts Series and ARCA Menards Series drivers
More information: Click here.

Hendrick Motorsports
When: Oct. 9 from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. ET
Where: 4400 Papa Joe Hendrick Blvd., Charlotte, N.C., 28262
Participating: Kyle Larson, William Byron, Chase Elliott, Alex Bowman, Corey Day (plus other appearances)
More information: Click here.

Spire Motorsports
When: Oct. 9 from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. ET (team store opens at 8:30 a.m. ET)
Where: 351 Mazeppa Rd., Mooresville, N.C., 28115
Participating: Daniel Suárez, Carson Hocevar, Michael McDowell
More information: Click here.

Team Penske: Open House
When: Oct. 9 from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. ET
Where: 200 Penske Way, Mooresville, N.C., 28115
Participating: TBD
More information: Click here.

JR Motorsports
When: Oct. 9 starting at 10 a.m. ET
Where: 349 Cayuga Drive, Mooresville, N.C., 28117
Participating: Carson Kvapil, Justin Allgaier, Sammy Smith, Rajah Caruth, Jake Finch

The event is the 21st points-paying race of the 2026 campaign.

ENTRY LISTS: Cup Series | O’Reilly Auto Parts Series | Craftsman Truck Series

Front Row Motorsports’ Layne Riggs will look to bounce back after a disappointing 19th-place finish at Kansas Speedway and hunt down championship leader Kaden Honeycutt, who leads the No. 34 Ford driver by 37 points entering Charlotte.

O’Reilly Auto Parts Series regular Brent Crews will get behind the wheel of the No. 1 Tricon Garage Toyota. After a runner-up finish a couple of races ago at Bristol, Bayley Currey returns to the No. 5 Tricon Toyota.

Full-time O’Reilly Series driver Rajah Caruth is set to drive the No. 77 Spire Motorsports Chevrolet, while Regan Smith gets a second race in the No. 25 Kaulig Racing Ram after driving for the team at Bristol.

Thirty-six trucks are entered into Friday’s Queen City contest.

MORE: Weekend schedule | How to watch NASCAR on FOX

View the Charlotte entry list here:

The Blue Cross NC 300 will be the fifth of nine races that make up The Chase presented by Mobil 1, with the 300-mile showdown also serving as the 29th points-paying event overall.

ENTRY LISTS: Cup Series | O’Reilly Auto Parts Series | Craftsman Truck Series

Haas Factory Team driver Sheldon Creed continues to lead The Chase standings, holding a 19-point advantage over JR Motorsports’ Carson Kvapil entering the Queen City.

Carson Brown is set to make his second career O’Reilly Auto Parts Series start in the No. 32 Jordan Anderson Racing Chevrolet after finishing 15th at Iowa Speedway earlier this year in his debut. Austin Green will make his return to the O’Reilly Series for the first time since Sonoma Raceway in late June, driving the No. 87 Peterson Racing Chevrolet.

Thirty-eight cars are entered into this weekend’s Charlotte event.

MORE: Weekend schedule | How to watch NASCAR on The CW, ESPN Unlimited

View Saturday’s Charlotte entry list here:

The Bank of America 400 will be the sixth of 10 races in The Chase presented by Mobil 1 and the 32nd points-paying event overall in 2026. This will be the first fall race on the 1.5-mile Charlotte oval since October 2017, after using the Roval configuration from 2018 through 2025.

ENTRY LISTS: Cup Series | O’Reilly Auto Parts Series | Craftsman Truck Series

After Hendrick Motorsports driver Kyle Larson gutted out a runner-up finish at Las Vegas, he extended his championship lead at the halfway mark of The Chase to 40 points over Joe Gibbs Racing’s Denny Hamlin entering Charlotte.

Three non-chartered entries will compete in the Charlotte fall race — Corey Heim in the No. 67 23XI Racing Toyota, Gray Gaulding in the No. 66 Garage 66 Ford and NY Racing Team’s No. 44 Chevrolet.

Thirty-nine cars are entered into this weekend’s Chase race.

MORE: Weekend schedule | How to watch NASCAR on NBC, USA Network

View the Charlotte entry list here:

Through five races of The Chase presented by Mobil 1, Larson has yet to finish outside the top five, with a mind-melting 2.2 average finish and 54.6 points per race.

Sunday was Larson‘s grittiest performance yet for the No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports team. With crew chief Cliff Daniels leading the rally, Larson charged back from a 26-second pit stop, falling off the lead lap and wading through abysmal early handling to contend for the win before finishing second.

RELATED: Race results | At-track photos: Las Vegas

Just when it seemed like Larson was due for his first day of postseason trouble, he, Daniels and Co. found a way back toward the top of the mountain all over again — spelling further trouble for his fellow Chase contenders behind him.

“We’ve done it before, so it’s not like a surprise,” Larson said of his rally. “Because of that, I was confident that we could dig ourselves out of it and potentially get a win out of the day, and we almost did that. So yeah. I wish our balance had been closer to fire off just because we left so many stage points out there. We’re plus-40, and it could easily be plus-50. So a little bit of a missed opportunity, but definitely a great rebound, so yeah, happy with the fight.”

Another man satisfied with Larson’s resilience was Jeff Gordon, Hendrick Motorsports’ vice chairman, legendary four-time Cup champion and NASCAR Hall of Famer.

“Just so proud of you guys, man,” Gordon told Larson on pit road. “That was a hell of a battle. I know that wasn’t fun at the beginning, but …”

“It was not,” Larson said, “but it was fun at the end.”

“That’s championship-caliber effort right there, man,” Gordon said.

Gordon knows exactly what that looks like.

The NASCAR Hall of Famer exuded it for a decade before his own protégé, Jimmie Johnson, joined Hendrick Motorsports with crew chief Chad Knaus in 2002 and began rewriting NASCAR history. During Johnson’s unprecedented stretch of five consecutive Cup Series championships from 2006 through 2010, his best five-race start in The Chase was a 3.2 average finish in 2009. But something about how Johnson’s No. 48 team operated always stood out: even in the throes of adversity, Johnson and Knaus could overcome anything.

A prime example came during the 2008 edition of The Chase. On a day when Johnson was penalized and lapped early, Carl Edwards led 98 laps and stormed to the win at Atlanta Motor Speedway (now EchoPark Speedway), putting his elation on display in Victory Lane as he looked to chip into Johnson’s point lead. But mid-interview, Edwards learned Johnson had rallied all the way back to second place — and the dejection that crossed Edwards’ face summed up the No. 48 team’s peak.

“Man, Jimmie’s magic,” Edwards said in disbelief.

The same sentiment was shared nearly 18 years later by Sunday‘s race winner, Chase Briscoe. Briscoe swept both stages en route to the win, collecting 75 points and slicing 39 points from his deficit to Larson. He leaves Las Vegas 84 points behind the championship leader. But there in his shadow was the No. 5 car anyway — a team that has direct roots to the old No. 48 team, on which Daniels served as a race engineer from 2015 through 2018.

“I could see like a glimmer of like neon yellow (in the rearview mirror), and I couldn’t tell if it was Blaney or Larson,” Briscoe recalled. “I kept thinking, ‘man, if that’s Larson, he’s got to be really, really good to be able to go from the back, drive all the way back to the field.’ And yeah, obviously I saw kind of a peek of him at like 10 to go. I’m like, ‘yep, that’s the 5.’ And yeah, I mean they’re a championship-caliber team. I mean, they won the championship last year. They’ve won them in the past, and that’s what ultimately championship teams do. They can rally from stuff like that.”

WATCH: Briscoe zeroes in on Larson, No. 5 team

This time, the comeback began with a Stage 1 setback. Larson qualified sixth but quickly dropped to 14th in the first 33 laps. Daniels, in his ever-diligent, never-panic demeanor, crafted a plan for significant adjustments under green-flag conditions that ultimately led to a 26-second pit stop as the team adjusted the front ride heights and crossweight of the vehicle.

“In talking with our front tire changer Jafar Hall and Jesse (Saunders), our car chief, we thought it could go a little quicker,” Daniels said. “The reality is, it’s a really tough space to get in to be able to make that adjustment. So even to say, ‘man, I was hoping it would have gone faster,’ it is really difficult to execute, and I thought Jafar did really well in the moment. I was ready to bail on the change, and he stuck it through and got the change. Like I said a few minutes ago, we had to eat the pain early, knowing that that was probably going to put our car’s overall balance in a better spot to build forward from there. So it’s a tough call to make; not proud that we were that far off, but glad we got the adjustment in, and we were just able to kind of chip away at our race from there.”

Larson admitted he didn’t think the stop or fix would take that long and worried the team had found something broken during the stop. Instead, while he did lose a lap in the process, he was able to take the wave around when the caution flag waved at Lap 45 for a crash by Zane Smith. Larson got back onto the lead lap, stayed there through another pit stop and eventually had a car capable of competing for the win.

“It took so long that, yeah, we came out behind the leaders, and I was like, ‘Damn, this is not good,’ ” Larson said. “But that caution coming out with minimal laps on our tires to do the wave really kind of saved our day.”

And in the process, Larson and Co. delivered dejection to the rest of his competitors.

Tyler Reddick, a five-time winner this season, has battled plenty of issues with his 23XI Racing team through the second half of the season. That continued Sunday at Las Vegas as the No. 45 Toyota dealt with voltage gremlins and the team had to swap out its battery during the Stage 1 break. This time, though, Reddick was able to storm back to a third-place finish — even after Larson bounced off the wall and contact between the two sent Reddick spinning coming to the checkered flag.

“I mean, gotta have complete races if we want to win them. That’s the deal,” Reddick said. “And yeah, we’ve had multiple issues. We had multiple issues today, and it was nice fighting back from them. But played part in coming up short. I mean, we’ve got to win these races. We know that. So I mean, still not getting it done.”

MORE: Dramatic finish for Larson, Reddick | Bell reflects on frustrating day

Christopher Bell ran the final half of the race without power steering. Crew chief Adam Stevens speculated that the power-steering cooler was cracked, allowing water into the system and boiling the power-steering fluid out of the car.

“Never fun running without power steering,” Bell said. “But I don’t know, I got into a pretty good rhythm where I could just kind of roll around, and my car was handling good enough that I could just roll around and do OK. Just disappointing to have a great opportunity in front of us and not come away with it.”

Sitting third in points, Bell is still very much in contention for the championship, trailing Larson by 55 points. But a 19th-place finish at Gateway and a 23rd-place finish Sunday hinder those title hopes.

Briscoe has climbed to sixth and whittled his margin to 84 points, but he sees time running out.

“You’re just getting to the point where there’s not enough races left to make up that many points,” Briscoe said. “And look, it’s still going to be extremely, extremely difficult. But I at least kept myself in the ballgame. If you’re 120 out with five (left), I mean, it’s mathematically possible, but it’s just so hard to do that. So yeah, just kept ourselves in the ballgame and that’s ultimately all you can ask for when you’ve had kind of the start that we’ve had.”

Larson, meanwhile, has no intention of letting off the gas, seeking to continue his historic start to The Chase. He has gained 95 points on Hamlin through five races, transforming a 55-point deficit as the No. 7 seed into a 40-point championship lead.

“These were all good tracks for us, so yes, I’m surprised we’ve gotten two wins and five top fives a bit, but I also believed that we could run well,” Larson said. “It’s gone way better than I thought it would, but still, I mean, five more races and you could see how much points have been gained in the first five. That could easily switch the next five. So just gotta make the most out of the days, fight through them like we did today, and yeah, go to Charlotte next. Don’t look too far ahead of yourself and just focus.”

Patrick Emerling, a Modified Tour winner at Thompson, enters Sunday’s finale with a comfortable, 30-point advantage on Austin Beers in the race for the title. He’ll look to put the finishing touches on his first championship with a strong performance Sunday evening.

Sunday’s event will mark the 161st Modified Tour race held at historic speedway dating back to 1985. Mike Stefanik leads all drivers with 15 Modified Tour wins at the track, with Justin Bonsignore right on his heels with 14 victories. Other notable winners include Ted Christopher, Jeff Fuller, Tony Hirschman, Doug Coby, Rick Fuller and the most recent Tour winner at the track, Matt Hirschman, among others.

Tickets to Sunday’s World Series 150 are available trackside. Below is everything you need to know about the 2026 NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour season finale.

World Series 150 at Thompson Speedway Motorsports Park

In his ninth full season of Modified Tour racing, Patrick Emerling is on the verge of his first championship.

Emerling, a five-time winner this season in NASCAR’s oldest division, enters Sunday’s finale at Thompson with a 30-point margin in the battle for the championship. A finish of 25th or better will clinch the championship for Emerling no matter what second-place Austin Beers does Sunday.

A win at Thompson would simply be icing on the cake for Emerling, but there’s a stout field of competitors who will look to deny Emerling that satisfaction.

Chief among them is Matt Hirschman, the most recent Thompson winner in Modified Tour competition. Hirschman also leads the FloRacing Connecticut Challenge, which concludes Sunday at Thompson. The four-race miniseries featuring the four Modified Tour events in the state of Connecticut will pay $7,500 to the champion.

Beers, who has gone winless thus far in 2026 with KLM Motorsports, will look to close the season with his first win at Thompson. While the championship seems unlikely, Beers can still end the season in Victory Lane if things go according to plan Sunday.

Justin Bonsignore and the Ken Massa Motorsports should also be among the contenders Sunday. Bonsignore enters the event with 14 Thompson victories, one shy of the record held by NASCAR Hall of Famer Mike Stefanik. A win Sunday would put Bonsignore in rarified air.

Another notable entry is that of Eric Goodale, who will make his 250th Modified Tour start Sunday. His most recent series victory came at Thompson in 2022, something he’d like to replicate this weekend.

Other notable entries include Stephen Kopcik, Teddy Hodgdon, Doug Coby, Jon McKennedy, Tyler Rypkema, Mike Christopher Jr., Chase Dowling and Paulie Hartwig III, among others.

The full entry list for Sunday’s World Series 150 will be available later this week.

RACING REFERENCE:

• Previous NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour races at Thompson
• NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour drivers at White Thompson

SCHEDULE: Sunday, Oct. 11: Practice from 12:05 to 12:50 p.m. … Final practice from 1:20 to 1:50 p.m. … American Racer Pole Award qualifying at 3:30 p.m. … Start of the World Series 150 (150 Laps / 93.75 Miles) at 4:30 p.m. ET.

QUALIFYING: Two consecutive qualifying laps. (EIRI) Faster lap determines qualifying position. Adjustments or repairs may not be made on the vehicle after the vehicle has taken the green flag at the start/finish line. NASCAR reserves the right to have more than one vehicle engage in qualifying runs at the same time. Starting field for the World Series 150 presented by FloSports.com is limited to 30 starters including Provisional Positions.

TIRE ALLOTMENT: The maximum tire allotment available for this event is eleven (11) tires per team. All tires used for qualifying and the race must be purchased at the track and scanned by NASCAR Officials, unless otherwise approved in advance by the Series Director. The same four (4) tires must be used for qualifying and to begin the race. The remaining tire allotment may be used for change tires. Maximum of three (3) tires of the allotment may be used as change tires. The tire change rule is two (2) tires per stop. This includes “swapping” tires front to back.

Here’s where we stand in The Chase after the NASCAR Cup Series left Las Vegas last night and before Sunday’s Bank of America 400 at Charlotte Motor Speedway (3 p.m. ET, USA Network, HBO Max, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).

RELATED: Las Vegas results | Cup Series standings

Chase Changer

Even on what started out as a bad day, Kyle Larson had a good day, and that’s bad news for the rest of The Chase competitors. Larson rebounded from a 26-second pit stop in Stage 1 at Las Vegas and overcame an ill-handling car at times to finish second despite tangling with Tyler Reddick on the final lap and needing his No. 5 HendrickCars.com Chevrolet to be towed away from the race track. In other words, the door seemed to be open for someone to close the gap in the standings, but Larson just wouldn’t let it happen.

Now the field is left hoping just to hold serve against Larson at Charlotte, the final 1.5-mile track in this three-race stretch, before better opportunities to gain ground at Phoenix, Talladega and Martinsville come along. What his Las Vegas performance showed was that Larson can be a legitimate threat to win a race even when his equipment and setup might not be optimal. And that’s just the sign of a great driver, which we all knew Larson was, but sometimes need a reminder of from time to time to know just how great.

When Chase Briscoe’s crew chief James Small was asked after the Las Vegas win what his driver needs to do to catch Larson, he said it was simple, win more races. Except as Small and everyone else in NASCAR knows, it’s not that simple. And that’s especially true when you’re chasing someone as versatile, as resilient, and as seemingly unshakable as Larson.

The Chase Board

Denny Hamlin just keeps losing ground to Larson, and those who witnessed Hamlin’s dominance throughout the season are wondering when he’s finally going to take a stand. After a 16th-place finish at Las Vegas, Hamlin lost another 14 points to Larson and the gap is now 40 points heading to Charlotte. That margin is getting dangerously close to being unreachable in one race, so the time is now for Denny to do something. Hamlin has one win in 35 races at Charlotte, but it came in the Next Gen car in the 2022 Coca-Cola 600. He also had top-five finishes at Charlotte in 2024 and earlier this season. The last time the Bank of America 400 was on the oval track (2017), Hamlin finished fourth.

Christopher Bell was headed for a good day at Las Vegas until power-steering issues relegated him to a 23rd-place finish. Before that, Bell was running up front, finishing second in Stage 1 and third in Stage 2. It was those 17 stage points that kept him afloat on a 31-point day at Las Vegas, but he still dropped five points to Larson in the standings and is 55 points behind heading to Charlotte. On the bright side, Bell has been great in the Next Gen car at Charlotte, with a win and three other top 10s in five appearances. So he might not be done yet.

Austin Cindric led another banner day for Team Penske with a fourth-place finish at Las Vegas, this following a second-place run at Kansas. Ryan Blaney (fifth place) and Joey Logano (10th) joined Cindric in the top 10 as Team Penske has found something for the 1.5-mile tracks. Cindric gained 12 points on Larson but still sits 128 points back and likely out of contention. Blaney gained 11 points to pull to within 80 points back while Logano lost four points to drop 71 points back. But if Blaney and Logano can gain ground at Charlotte, then they will be in good shape heading to favorable tracks in Phoenix and Talladega for the organization.

Rank	Driver	Points Behind	Gain/Loss to Leader
1	Kyle Larson	--	Gained 14
2	Denny Hamlin	-40	Lost 14
3	Christopher Bell	-55	Lost 5
4	Joey Logano	-71	Lost 4
5	Ryan Blaney	-80	Gained 11
6	Chase Briscoe	-84	Gained 39
7	Tyler Reddick	-106	Gained 5
8	Ty Gibbs	-110	Lost 16
9	Austin Cindric	-128	Gained 12
10	Bubba Wallace	-137	Gained 3
11	Carson Hocevar	-158	Lost 8
12	William Byron	-160	Lost 2
13	Chase Elliott	-163	Lost 2
14	Daniel Suárez	-195	Lost 8
15	Chris Buescher	-196	Lost 10
16	Ryan Preece	-200	Lost 27

Source: Racing Insights

Next Up

Charlotte Motor Speedway ends a stretch of three straight 1.5-mile tracks, and we’ve already talked about how some of the main competitors have done there in the past. This is the first time the oval will be in play for the fall race since 2017, so in a sense, everyone is coming in not knowing completely what to expect. Hopefully, the teams can get practice and qualifying in on Saturday to hone in on their setups for what will be another pivotal race in The Chase.

As one might expect, Hamlin is the top laps leader at Charlotte with 543, but he’s also the one with the most races there (35) by far. William Byron is next with 485 laps led (in just 10 races), followed by Larson with 447, Chase Elliott with 342 and Logano with 340. The mantle of most wins among active drivers belongs to non-Chase driver Brad Keselowski with two. After that, seven Chase drivers have one win at the track, including Elliott, Logano, Larson, Hamlin, Suárez, Blaney and Bell.

In average finish, it’s Tyler Reddick at the top at 9.5 (in eight races), Bell at 11.8 (in eight races), followed by Hamlin (11.8), Logano (13.1) and Byron (13.2). Expect The Chase contenders to be running up front and for all of them to have their eyes on Larson. And like Las Vegas, how teams react to the unexpected could be a big factor, as well as how many unforced errors they can avoid themselves.

Despite Austin Cindric and Ryan Blaney cracking the top five in last week’s showdown at Kansas Speedway, questions remained about whether Team Penske had truly turned the corner at the 1.5-mile tracks in the heart of The Chase presented by Mobil 1. Was Kansas merely a blip, or could the organization sustain its upward trajectory in Sin City?

The two champion teammates of Blaney and Joey Logano wasted little time climbing up the leaderboard from mid-pack starting spots in Sunday’s South Point 400. Blaney raced to third in the opening stage, with Cindric two positions behind. Logano narrowly missed out on stage points, taking the green-and-checkered flag in 12th place.

RELATED: Race results | At-track photos: Vegas

While championship hopefuls stumbled throughout the 267-lap affair, all three Penske cars remained steady. The lone misstep came from the No. 2 team, which fumbled its pit stop at the conclusion of Stage 1. A Lap 94 debris caution gave crew chief Brian Wilson an opportunity to get ahead of the strategy, however, calling Cindric to pit road while the bulk of the field stayed out. Cindric then stretched his fuel mileage to the end of the stage, finishing runner-up to Chase Briscoe.

“We didn’t start the race necessarily as close as we needed to and didn’t start practice as close as we needed to, but the guys worked on it all day and gave us some strengths that we didn’t have before,” Cindric said after the race, earning consecutive top-five finishes for the first time in his 182-race career. “It takes a great team.”

Blaney scored 15 stage points Sunday afternoon, tied with Cindric for third-most in the race. During a caution-free final segment, Cindric passed his teammate to finish fourth, giving both drivers top-five finishes in consecutive weeks. Logano rounded out the top 10.

With Kyle Larson’s early woes, Blaney gained 11 points on his championship deficit, now 80 markers behind the No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet. Logano surrendered only four points to the championship lead, merely a net positive for the No. 22 team at an intermediate track.

“Our mile-and-a-half stuff has definitely been getting better and better,” Blaney told NASCAR.com. “Props to everybody for that. That’s encouraging. Just try to keep going; try to take little chunks at a time.

“I think we’re definitely on the right path. I do think there’s a little way to go for raw speed, especially early in runs — [Briscoe] was lights out early in runs. He faded but built the gap to where we couldn’t quite make it up. We’re getting there, but definitely not where we want to be, but you’ve got to start somewhere.”

Logano was pleased with the progress from the Las Vegas race in March, when he took the checkered flag in 15th. That makes consecutive strong performances at 1.5-mile tracks for the No. 22 team, though he corded a tire in the waning laps at Kansas and limped to 20th in the final rundown.

“There were moments where we were good on the short run and moments we were good on the long run, but having both, it was hard to have that,” Logano said. “Just an OK day. But OK on a mile-and-a-half is improvement for us.”

MORE: Briscoe prevails at LVMS | Cup Series standings

Cindric remains ninth on the Chase grid and needs to convert a few Hail Marys to erase a 128-point deficit with five races remaining in the 2026 season. Logano (minus-71) and Blaney (minus-80), meanwhile, still believe they are within striking distance, particularly with the way the back half of the postseason schedule is shaping up.

“We’re close enough to say we can do it,” Logano said. “We’re right on the edge, though. We can race with nothing to lose because we’re right on that edge of being able to win the championship.”

Said Blaney: “Still doable. I would have rather gained 11 today than lose 11.”

The swing of intermediate races concludes on Sunday at Charlotte Motor Speedway (3 p.m. ET, USA Network, HBO Max, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio), where Penske earned a pair of top 10s (Blaney seventh, Logano eighth) during the Coca-Cola 600 in May.

Below is the list of all-time winners, in order, in the Cup Series.

Last update: After Race 31 of the 2026 season (Las Vegas Motor Speedway).

Active drivers in ALL CAPS

Larson was running second as he pursued eventual winner Chase Briscoe, and his No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet clanged against the outside retaining wall as he rode the high groove at the end of Sunday’s South Point 400. He slowed after the contact, and Reddick’s No. 45 23XI Racing Toyota piled in before it veered sharply into the infield grass.

RELATED: Race results | At-track photos: Las Vegas

Larson kept his Kyle Busch tribute car rolling with sizable right-side damage and ended up second, 1.376 seconds behind Briscoe’s No. 19 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota at the checkered flag. Reddick ended up third.

“I was just trying to push it through (Turns) 3 and 4 to build some momentum at him and try to get by him down the straightaway,” said Larson, who has now finished first or second in the last four Cup Series races. “I just got really loose and overcorrected it into the wall. Thankfully, I was able to limp it home. It got exciting, for sure. I wish I could have won in this paint scheme while honoring Kyle because that would have been in very Kyle Busch fashion, but again, it was a great fight by this team.”

Larson, who recovered from early handling woes that left him a lap down to eventually contend in the late going, expanded his lead in the Cup Series standings to 40 points over second-place Denny Hamlin in The Chase presented by Mobil 1 postseason. He described Sunday’s showing as “a fight all day long.”

MORE: Cup Series standings

Reddick, who rallied after mechanical trouble early on, gained five points on the leader but sits 106 points out. He equaled his best finish in this year’s Chase, a third-place finish from the pole in the postseason opener last month at Darlington Raceway.

“That pretty much sums up what today was like,” Reddick said of the closing laps. “Just one thing after another for us. Just really proud of everyone‘s effort on this Jordan Brand Toyota Camry. We didn‘t lose a lap changing the battery there, and we were able to drive back to the front — it just took too long. It put us in a spot where we had to be perfect on that final run, and unfortunately, we had some more mistakes and we came out behind the 5 (Larson) after we got by him in the first part of that run.

“I think ultimately that was the difference. If we could have stayed ahead of him leaving pit road, I think we get to those cars first and maybe don‘t burn up as much. I think we could have won today.”

HOW TO WATCH

Key information: FOX, FS1, FS2 | Prime Video | TNT Sports | Max in-car cameras | NBC, USA | The CW

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Watch NASCAR 24/7: NASCAR Channel on Prime Video, Roku, Samsung TV Plus, Tubi and Xumo

More on The CW: Find your station

International: Watch NASCAR outside of the US

LISTINGS

Monday, October 5

11 p.m., SPEED With Harvick & Buxton, FS1

Tuesday, October 6

4:30 a.m., SPEED With Harvick & Buxton (re-air), FS2
7 p.m., Kevin Harvick’s Happy Hour: Las Vegas Recap, FS2

Wednesday, October 7

9 a.m., SPEED With Harvick & Buxton (re-air), FS2
10 a.m., Kevin Harvick’s Happy Hour: Las Vegas Recap (re-air), FS2

Thursday, October 8

9 a.m., SPEED With Harvick & Buxton (re-air), FS2
10 a.m., Kevin Harvick’s Happy Hour: Las Vegas Recap (re-air), FS2
8 p.m., SPEED With Harvick & Buxton, FS1
8:30 p.m., Kevin Harvick’s Happy Hour, FS1

Friday, October 9

Midnight, SPEED With Harvick & Buxton (re-air), FS2
12:30 a.m., Kevin Harvick’s Happy Hour (re-air), FS2
9 a.m., SPEED With Harvick & Buxton (re-air), FS2
9:30 a.m., Kevin Harvick’s Happy Hour (re-air), FS2
1 p.m., NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series: Practice and Qualifying at Charlotte Motor Speedway, FS2
5 p.m., NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series: Ecosave 200 at Charlotte Motor Speedway, FOX
8 p.m., Kyle Busch: A Celebration of Life, FS1

Saturday, October 10

1 a.m., NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series: Ecosave 200 at Charlotte Motor Speedway (re-air), FS2
7 a.m., NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series: Ecosave 200 at Charlotte Motor Speedway (re-air), FS1
9 a.m., Kevin Harvick’s Happy Hour (re-air), FS2
8:30 a.m., NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series: Practice and Qualifying at Charlotte Motor Speedway, ESPN Unlimited
11 a.m., NASCAR Cup Series: Practice and Qualifying at Charlotte Motor Speedway, truTV
3:30 p.m., NASCAR Countdown Live, The CW
4 p.m., NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series: Blue Cross NC 300 at Charlotte Motor Speedway, The CW/ESPN Unlimited
7 p.m., NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series: Ecosave 200 at Charlotte Motor Speedway (re-air), FS2
7 p.m., NASCAR Weekly Racing at Hickory Motor Speedway, FloRacing
11 p.m., NASCAR Americana: Enduring Spirit (re-air), CNBC

Sunday, October 11

4 a.m., Kevin Harvick’s Happy Hour (re-air), FS2
4:30 a.m., SPEED With Harvick & Buxton (re-air), FS2
8 a.m., NASCAR Youth Series at Charlotte, FloRacing
2:30 p.m., IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship: 2026 Season Review Special, NBC and Peacock
2:30 p.m., NASCAR Cup Series: USA Sports Pre-Race Charlotte, USA Network
3 p.m., NASCAR Cup Series: Bank of America 400 at Charlotte Motor Speedway, USA Network and HBO Max
4:15 p.m., NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour: World Series 150 at Thompson Speedway Motorsports Park, FloRacing/NASCAR Channel
6:30 p.m., NASCAR Cup Series: USA Sports Post-Race Charlotte, USA Network
7 p.m., IMSA 2026 Season Review, Peacock/NBCSN

Editor’s Note: The 2026 NASCAR TV Schedule is updated weekly throughout the season.

Starting from the Busch Light pole position, Hamlin had ample speed in Sunday‘s South Point 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. But by the end of the opening stage, the No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota was coming from behind.

RELATED: Race results | At-track photos: Las Vegas

Hamlin spun from fourth place while chasing Christopher Bell and Ryan Blaney with three laps remaining in Stage 1, costing himself crucial stage points. Cutting across the apron damaged the splitter on the No. 11, and his car was never the same afterward.

“Just trying to make up track position that we lost and trying to push to get it back,” Hamlin told a group of reporters after taking the checkered flag in 16th position. “Evidently, there was marbles or something up there — it was quite odd. I went up there to try to get a run and just spun out and obviously damaged the car.

“They are telling me every point matters, and I was trying to get the spots back that we lost.”

The damage to Hamlin‘s track position was done well before the Lap 77 spin. When Zane Smith spun on Lap 43, Chris Gayle, crew chief of the No. 11, called Hamlin to pit road for two fresh Goodyear tires. It proved to be a double whammy: Kyle Larson‘s No. 5 team had taken a major gamble during the opening stage and lost a lap after a 26-second pit stop for mass adjustments, but the caution allowed him to take the wave-around. Eight cars stayed on the track, putting Hamlin ninth for the restart.

Hamlin worked his way back to fourth with relative ease, but closing the gap to the two cars ahead proved far more difficult. In hindsight, Gayle admitted he would like a mulligan on the decision, opting instead to keep Hamlin on the track rather than send him to pit road and drop the No. 11 back through the field.

“I worry more about the part of it that I can control and the part of it I can control is, I probably should not have pitted there,” a fiery Gayle said post-race. “That‘s what took us from the lead — the 19 and 20 stayed behind us and a few guys after the green-flag cycle that stayed there. That‘s where we pit, I knew five or six guys would stay out — we had a couple more better cars with the 19 and 20 staying out.”

After dropping into the low 20s, Hamlin rallied to 14th by the end of Stage 2. His race took another major hit on Lap 170 when the No. 11 lost fuel pressure while preparing for a restart, costing him another 12 positions. Hamlin clawed back a handful of spots over the final 96-lap run to finish 16th, second among the Joe Gibbs Racing entries after the organization had its cars running first through fourth in the opening laps, seemingly setting the stage for a Toyota runaway.

Instead, Larson holds the championship lead by 40 points over Hamlin with five races remaining in the 2026 campaign.

“You just have to play the ball where it lies,” Hamlin said, “and where it lies is we have a little gap we‘ve got to make up so we‘ve got to perform at our best.”

Gayle was even more frustrated to have surrendered 14 points on a day when the No. 11 team appeared poised to gain momentum.

“It sucked. It don‘t matter, what did we finish 16th? I didn‘t even look at it, I was so mad,” a blunt Gayle stated. “Great that we‘re only 40 out, so we gave up 14. Great that we didn‘t give up more than that because we probably deserved to.”

Through the first five events in The Chase presented by Mobil 1, Hamlin has an average finish of 10.8, scoring a best of third last week at Kansas Speedway. Compare that to Larson‘s heater of a 2.2 average finish in those same races — all top fives — and the No. 5 team has gained 95 points on the No. 11 bunch in that timeframe.

Hamlin and the JGR brass know that, despite the speed bumps that have dotted the first half of the postseason, there is still plenty of racing left before the championship is settled.

“We haven‘t had any [catastrophic] days but certainly had our fair share of not performing,” a subdued Hamlin said. “Today, leaving a bazillion points on the table considering where we were before the wreck.”

But team owner Joe Gibbs has seen this story before and isn‘t willing to give up hope yet.

“I think it‘s pretty miraculous considering everything that‘s happened in these first five races,” Gibbs acknowledged. “Everybody can see, you win a race and have a day like Chase [Briscoe] did today, you get 70-something points — I think that‘s where we are with the 11. We need a win, and I think we will be right on top of it. We‘ve got five races. I only go off of the first five and it‘s been wild. I think the next five will be the same way.”

The dominating win over the series championship leader, Kyle Larson, comes a week after Briscoe just missed beating Larson in the closing laps at Kansas Speedway. It moves Briscoe up two positions in the Chase championship standings with five races remaining in the season. It was redemption for him and the team, he conceded.

RELATED: Race results | At-track photos

“I don‘t think I‘d be able to get on the [team] plane [if I didn‘t win],” the 31-year-old Indiana native and driver of the No. 19 JGR Toyota said with a smile, referring to last week‘s race outcome.

“So thankful to get this Toyota back in Victory Lane,” he added. “It‘s been … not a rough year, but just not the results we necessarily want. So, glad to get all our partners back in Victory Lane.”

The margin of victory Sunday was larger and a bit misleading, as Larson and 23XI Racing‘s Tyler Reddick had chased Briscoe down in the closing laps — cutting his lead to less than four-tenths of a second with a lap remaining, only to have Larson hit the wall directly in front of Reddick on the final lap, final corner push toward Briscoe for a victory.

Larson settled his No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet enough to maintain his second-place position behind Briscoe. And after tagging Larson‘s bumper in the incident, Reddick was also able to regroup and manhandle his No. 45 23XI Racing Toyota after it slid across the infield grass onto pit road — ultimately maintaining his third-place position.

SHOP: Winner gear

“It was a fight,” said a smiling Larson, who increased his championship points lead from 26 points to 40 over Briscoe‘s JGR teammate Denny Hamlin, who finished 16th. “I was surprised how far off we were that first run [of the race].

“My car got better but track position was so important, and we just chipped away at it all race long,” Larson added. “Just tried to stay patient, but my tires were pretty much burnt off by the time I got there [to Briscoe]. Just tried to do what I could to try to win. Felt like I moved up at the right time and did a decent job with it; just was trying to push hard in [Turns] 3 and 4 to build some momentum out, and I don‘t know, and just got really loose and overcorrected in the wall. Thankfully, I was able to limp it home, and Reddick was able to come away third as well. That got exciting.

“I wish we could have won in this paint scheme honoring [Las Vegas native] Kyle [Busch],” Larson said of the first race back in Busch‘s hometown after the late two-time series champion passed away in May.

Team Penske teammates Austin Cindric and Ryan Blaney rounded out the top-five. Hendrick Motorsports teammates William Byron and Chase Elliott were sixth and seventh, followed by 23XI Racing‘s Bubba Wallace, Trackhouse Racing‘s Shane Van Gisbergen and Team Penske‘s Joey Logano. Van Gisbergen is the only top-10 finisher not Chase-eligible.

The JGR driver Hamlin, who won the previous two Las Vegas races and started Sunday from pole position, rallied from a mid-race spin and finished 16th. His teammate, Ty Gibbs — whose 24th birthday was Sunday — finished 17th after starting on the front row. An early pit penalty forced him into playing catch-up. Their teammate, Christopher Bell, who also led laps in the No. 20 JGR Toyota, finished 23rd, forced to wrangle his Camry without power steering the second half of the race.

READ: More on Hamlin’s issues

“Was just trying to get back track position that we lost and just went up there got into the marbles and spun out,” Hamlin said of his incident. “Obviously damaged the car, so it was nothing like it was before.

“Just got to go on to the next race and see if we can‘t find a way to win. Charlotte will be good for us, but today certainly didn‘t live up to what we expected.”

Bell maintained his third place in the championship standings, but is now 55 points off the reigning series champ Larson‘s pace. Logano is fourth, 71 points back, and Blaney is fifth, 80 points off the pace.

Five races remain to settle the 2026 trophy. The series returns to action next weekend with the Bank of America 400 (3 p.m. ET, USA Network, HBO Max, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) at Charlotte Motor Speedway, marking the first time the fall event will be held on the oval since 2017, when Martin Truex Jr. won the race. Daniel Suarez won the rain-shortened Coca-Cola 600 on the oval in May.

Note: Post-race inspection was completed in the Cup Series garage with no issues, confirming Briscoe as the Las Vegas winner.

Stage 2 recap: Briscoe sweeps the stages

Chase Briscoe motored past Austin Cindric, Chase Elliott and William Byron — who all had much older tires — to win Stage 2 of Sunday‘s Cup Series race at Las Vegas (live on USA Network, HBO Max, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio). The race — the South Point 400 — is the fifth of 10 in The Chase presented by Mobil 1.

Cindric finished second, followed by Christopher Bell, Ryan Blaney and Bubba Wallace. Joey Logano, Elliott, Byron, Chris Buescher and Kyle Larson completed the top 10.

Chase drivers made up 15 of the top 16 spots. Ryan Preece of RFK Racing was the only outlier in 28th. Notably, Denny Hamlin climbed back to 14th after a spin at the end of Stage 1.

After Stage 1 ended, the pit cycle was plenty eventful. Tyler Reddick pitted from fourth on a closed pit road after previously indicating radiator issues on his No. 45 23XI Racing Toyota. Cindric‘s No. 2 Team Penske crew had a slow stop after a trip-up by the jackman. Bubba Wallace and the No. 23 23XI Racing team were penalized for equipment interference with the No. 3 Richard Childress Racing team of Austin Dillon.

Briscoe returned to the lead early in Stage 2, prevailing in a pair of restarts with a debris caution sandwiched in between at Lap 93.

That yellow resulted in a mix of strategies. Fifteen cars stayed out, including Hamlin, as he hoped to regain track position after his spin at the end of Stage 1. He reported a tight condition after the second restart, running 20th at the time.

MORE: Full Stage 2 results | Briscoe wins Stage 2

Green flag pit stops began Lap 125 with Brad Keselowski, who announced earlier in the week that he is departing RFK Racing after 2026. Briscoe left the racing surface at Lap 129 for his scheduled service and cycled back ahead of the other cars that pitted.

Bell pitted one lap behind Briscoe and cycled to second. But moments after his stop was completed, he radioed to his team and said he was losing power steering and that it was fading “very quickly.” He hung on, though, to score key Stage 2 points as the rest of the frame stayed green.

Stage 1 recap: Briscoe wins opening frame

Chase Briscoe won Stage 1 of Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series South Point 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, leading 35 of 80 laps.

Christopher Bell finished second, Ryan Blaney third, Tyler Reddick fourth and Austin Cindric fifth. Daniel Suárez, Bubba Wallace, Carson Hocevar, Alex Bowman and Michael McDowell completed the top 10 and points earners.

MORE: Full Stage 1 results

Denny Hamlin, who earned the Busch Light Pole Award on Saturday, fired to the lead on the initial start. All four Joe Gibbs Racing Toyotas ran 1-2-3-4 after qualifying that way until they made pit stops at Lap 36 under green. After the cycle was complete, Hamlin returned to the lead. Ty Gibbs, who ran second before service, was penalized for speeding and returned to serve a pass-through.

After starting sixth, Kyle Larson dropped eight positions during the opening stint and was the first driver to dart for pit road. He spent 26 seconds stopped in his stall for massive adjustments and ultimately fell a lap down once the pit cycle completed.

The first caution came out at Lap 45, when Zane Smith spun from 28th after an apparent tire issue. He clipped the Turn 4 outside wall with his right-rear fender but continued after visiting pit road for repairs.

Seven lead-lap cars stayed out, including Briscoe and Bell. Hamlin and his 23XI Racing drivers Tyler Reddick and Bubba Wallace were the first drivers to pit road, and they rejoined the field ninth through 11th. Larson also stayed out, allowing him to wave around to the lead lap.

With three laps to go in the stage, Hamlin spun by himself in Turns 3 and 4, coming to rest on the apron after keeping his No. 11 Toyota off the wall. The race remained green and Hamlin stayed on the lead lap, finishing the frame 28th. He led 39 of the first 80 laps.

Contributing: Staff report

Upon exiting his No. 45 Toyota following an 11th-place finish, Reddick was disgruntled. In the opening laps of last weekend‘s Hollywood Casino 400, he plummeted from 15th to 34th, hanging on to the lead lap by the skin of his teeth when a Lap 35 competition caution was displayed. The Billy Scott-led bunch powered on, constantly improving and cycled to the top five, only to drop to 11th after a late pit-road miscue.

RELATED: Chase standings | At-track photos

“I mean, running [11th] on an intermediate race track isn‘t really anything we should be proud of, honestly,” Reddick said following the race. “I mean, we fought to get back up in there, but we still just didn‘t have the speed we need to have at these intermediate tracks here.”

“We got big problems. We‘ve just got to figure our own (expletive) out right now and just not even be worried about that.”

With practice getting washed out at Kansas, the No. 45 team showed up off the hauler with the wrong balance. Tough conversations were had at 23XI Racing this week, as this year‘s Daytona 500 winner looks to turn his four months of misfortune around, dating back to Michigan International Speedway in early June.

“I think everybody on our side at 23XI, we‘re not happy with where our balances were,” Reddick said on Saturday at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. “We definitely missed it [at Kansas] the most of our cars, finding that tight balance. We were able to have some takeaways from it.

“Certainly, it was very obvious at the start of the race how off we were. In some ways, it was nice that we were able to get within reason at the end of the race. We‘ve been trying to understand how we can get that far off and make those adjustments to not show up the same.”

Reddick has slipped to a season-low seventh in the championship standings after three consecutive finishes outside the top 10. He now trails Kyle Larson by 111 points, with Larson gaining 50 points on the No. 45 team during his dominant Kansas outing.

Reddick refuses to give up on the 2026 season. He led the points after each of the first 17 races and knows the No. 45 team has the potential to catch fire at any moment. With consecutive races at intermediate tracks ahead, Reddick has an opportunity to chip away at the deficit, starting with Sunday‘s South Point 400 (5:30 p.m. ET, USA Network, HBO Max, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio). He believes he still has an outside shot of making a championship push in The Chase presented by Mobil 1.

“It is still possible, but we‘ve got to run extraordinary and have things go our way, too, which you never want to be in that spot,” Reddick admitted. “For us, one race at a time to see if we can get our pace back to where we want to be on these intermediate tracks. If we get back on track, it‘s a good way for us to end out the year. That‘s what we‘re focused on. If we run good, it will close back in; all the things we‘re wanting will happen. But what starts all that is this weekend and this race and how well we perform.”

MORE: Starting lineup | Practice lap averages

The weekend began with Reddick stopping on track in practice due to a flat left-rear tire after having the best 15- and 20-lap averages in practice. The No. 45 car will take the green flag from fifth position.

Now it’s up to Joey Logano and Ryan Blaney to find their best 1.5-mile speed as Team Penske pivots to Las Vegas Motor Speedway on Sunday afternoon (5:30 p.m. ET, USA Network, HBO Max, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) in the fourth race in The Chase presented by Mobil 1.

MORE: Starting lineup | Chase standings

Logano enters Sunday’s South Point 400 fourth in the championship standings, 67 points behind series leader Larson, with teammate Blaney behind him in fifth — another 24 points behind Logano and 91 points behind Larson. Cindric’s stellar Sunday at Kansas moved him up to ninth in points, but the 2022 Daytona 500 champion is still 140 markers back of Larson.

Yet Cindric was again the top Penske driver on track Saturday at Las Vegas, qualifying his No. 2 Ford in seventh place as the top Ford behind five Toyotas and Larson’s Chevrolet. Blaney qualified 20th with Logano 23rd — the only Chase drivers to qualify outside the top 14.

“Yeah, I definitely think it was our best intermediate qualifying of the year, You know, we were (31st) this time in the spring,” Cindric said. “Our guys did a great job. I mean, having having a good draw helps as well. Going out that late gives a lot of confidence to watch other cars and know what to do. But no, I thought we made a lot of progress in a short amount of time on our Autotrader Ford Mustang in practice and obviously showed in qualifying for them.”

There is still optimism to be found in the Penske camp, albeit tempered through past 1.5-mile results. Blaney has a Penske-best average finish of 11.5 on 1.5-mile tracks this season while Cindric’s 16.5 ranks 12th of the 16 Chase drivers; Logano’s is a Chase-worst 20.3.

But Kansas was encouraging: Blaney rallied to a fifth-place finish at Kansas after starting 25th and Logano averaged an 8.1 running position before falling to 20th with a late tire issue.

“Definitely good momentum,” Blaney said. “I was very pleased with our performance at Kansas. Like you said, the 2 car was really fast. I thought Joey was good most of the day before he had a problem there at the end, but the mile-and-a-halfs have been a place we’ve been really wanting to get better, and I think we made a good gain to get closer to some of those guys. I don’t think it’s fully out of reach. So I thought Austin had a great shot to win that race if a couple things go his way. So that’s promising. Hopefully we’ve learned from last week and can apply them here.”

In a Wednesday teleconference, Logano said Cindric’s Kansas run impacted the team’s plans for Vegas immediately: “Hey, what do we want to try this weekend for setups and practice and how do we want to go about it?” That mindset was still in place Saturday in the moments ahead of Cup Series practice.

“Yeah, it definitely adds a lot of confidence,” Logano said. “It says the potential’s there, right? They had a really fast car — a car that probably could have won the race just with a couple little execution things being a little better. So the speed’s there. That means the potential’s there. It’s just a matter of us getting it all out of it.”

Vegas will offer the latest test of Penkse’s performance improvement. The organization has been incredibly successful since the summer, producing three wins for Logano and two for Blaney, bolstered by a few career days turned in by Cindric. But with previous disappointment on 1.5-mile race tracks, the question becomes whether its Kansas success is real or a flash in the pan.

“I think a few weeks ago or the last month or so, you could probably attribute (Penske’s recent success) to the track type, but we’ve kind of checked the box at least with one mile-and-a-half,” Cindric said. “But yeah, I think as you said, it’s a team. It’s a whole group effort. … It’s a year’s worth of work to get us to this point. So yeah, proud to have obviously that work pay off and hopefully be able to use that notebook to continue to excel for the remainder of the season.”

RELATED: 2026 O’Reilly Auto Parts Series schedule

What is the program? 

Designed to reward drivers financially for winning O’Reilly Auto Parts Series races, the program serves as a platform to highlight driver excellence and reinforce the strong connection between driver performance and the automotive community that supports their endeavors. Such a physical, mental and mechanical passion defines both NASCAR and O’Reilly Auto Parts, and this program is meant to emphasize the passion and grit displayed every weekend.

How does the program work?

O’Reilly Auto Parts will award $5,700 — “57” representing 1957, the year O’Reilly Auto Parts was founded — to the winner of each O’Reilly race this season, meaning $188,100 will go to the 33 race winners in 2026. Additionally, a $26,000 end-of-year bonus will go to the driver with the most per-race bonuses at the end of the season. Finally, a $57,000 bonus will be paid out at the end of the season to the 2026 O’Reilly Auto Parts Series champion.

Together, $271,100 will be awarded and, when combined with this year’s Dash 4 Cash program, full bonus distribution will amount to $671,100.

All drivers — full-time and part-time — qualify for each race bonus.

MORE: 2026 O’Reilly Auto Parts Series victors so far

Check out every O’Reilly race winner so far this season, and keep tabs on this page as more race winners are added.

2026 O’Reilly Auto Parts Series winners

Unfortunately for the JR Motorsports driver, the spoils of Vegas victory fell Day’s way by 0.287 seconds instead after a thrilling exchange in the series’ third race of The Chase presented by Mobil 1.

RELATED: Race results | At-track photos: Las Vegas 

Day and Kvapil exchanged the lead at the start/finish line four times across the final 11 laps, each pass appearing like a heavyweight punch. The closing circuits produced a stunning show worthy of a spot on the Las Vegas Strip: Kvapil and Day banged doors approaching the white flag to begin the final lap around the 1.5-mile circuit, with Day rocketing around the outside as Kvapil protected the bottom lane. Both drivers got sideways loose exiting Turn 2 with Day even smacking the outside wall before drawing back even with Kvapil.

The theatrics continued into Turns 3 and 4 and both took their preferred lanes. Day ricocheted off the wall again, and Kvapil could only watch as the No. 17 car drove away from him to score the win as Kvapil was forced to settle for second place.

“First things first, I’m bummed out, right?” Kvapil said. “It’s hard to run that good and be that close and lead a few of them towards the end and not win the race, but just part of it. I feel like all the guys on on this Bass Pro Shops Claire’s Technology Chevrolet with Hendrick Engines under the hood gave us a really fast car. And I felt like we never had the the lead position I guess to drive away or to defend, but we were always right there and in the top three once we got to race. And we seemed like we were always chasing people so it was apparent that it was going to be really hard to pass him.”

Day ultimately made it impossible for Kvapil’s advances to stick, but that didn’t stop Kvapil from trying. Still, Kvapil, a two-time winner this season, was left second-guessing his decision to stay low all race without giving the high lane a try late.

“At the end, I felt like for me, my bottom of 1 and 2 was our strong suit,” Kvapil said. “We would really gain wrapping the line down there and I could get back to the gas and get to his inside and have him have to have him make a decision in 3 and 4, but he did a really good job in 3 and 4 ripping the fence there. I didn’t know whether he was going to go to the fence or if he was just going to, I guess, run right beside my door and try to get me freed up on the bottom. But he did a good job running the top and didn’t make a mistake.”

Despite the disappointment of defeat, Kvapil was able to take a brief moment to acknowledge the fun he had racing Day after an intense, side-by-side battle lap after lap.

“I’m sure it was good,” Kvapil said. “From my seat, I didn’t like it as much as probably some others did. But no, this car that we have in the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series really puts on a good show, and it’s so much fun to drive these cars. That whole last run there, I felt like I was just hanging on, and there was a few times where it almost looped around on me and sliding the back a bunch, and just a lot of fun racing these things. I’m sure it puts on a good show. Whenever the drivers have fun, everyone sitting in the stands or watching on the couch feels the same way about it. So really cool. Obviously, would have loved to come out of there with the win, but either way, good race and we kept it pretty clean. It was cool.”

Perhaps lessening the sting was Kvapil’s climb in the points standings, slicing his deficit to points leader Sheldon Creed by roughly half: Kvapil entered third in points, 37 points back; he leaves second in points just 19 points behind Creed. That jump was aided by issues for JR Motorsports teammate Justin Allgaier, who was collected in a Lap 54 crash and fell from second to fourth in the standings.

“Obviously, having a good day is is the biggest thing, and whenever the people you’re racing for points don’t have the best days, that really helps too,” Kvapil said. “So obviously, don’t wish that upon them. But at the same time, it’s part of this Chase we have here. Some people are going to need to have bad days for you to be able to prevail and to fall back at that points gap or extend the points lead or whatever the situation it is.

“I mean we’ve got some wild cards coming up, especially with Talladega, Martinsville coming up. Just never know how those are going to go. So it’s hard to have a bad day before you get to one of those races. So for us and our 1 team, we’re just trying to have good consistent days and not make any mistakes to where we get to those races and we don’t have to worry so much about being super close on points.”

Day and Kvapil exchanged the lead four times in the last 12 laps before Day made a daring pass — after brushing the wall multiple times — with two laps remaining to solidify a trophy hoist ultimately decided by a slight 0.287 seconds.

RELATED: Race results | At-track photos: Vegas

“Oh man, I just was so tight there and so scared I was going to go down and plow on the bottom and let him get by me,” said a grinning Day, who started his No. 17 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet from pole position, won the opening stage and led a career-high 136 of the 201 laps. “Just a great car. We struggled over the summer, to tell you the truth. Won Talladega (in April) and then Dover pretty close and then just went dry. This feels really good. A dominant day for us for sure, great car.

“I knew we‘d be a title contender from the start of the year,” added Day, whose win puts him fifth in the 12-driver championship rankings with five races remaining on the season. “Just had a dry summer there but we‘re getting things rolling back in the right direction. We‘ll just keep working.”

Kvapil, who like Day, also earned his first career series wins this season (at Indianapolis and Iowa), was understandably disappointed to lose out on Saturday‘s victory, but also encouraged with the showing. It moved him into second place in the championship standings, now 19 points behind Haas Factory Team‘s Sheldon Creed, who finished 13th.

“I feel like our stuff was really good around the bottom,” Kvapil said. “Had a really good car today. Props to those guys for making us a top-three car. There at the end, I thought the 17 [Day] was pretty stout. Some lapped traffic held him up there and I was able to find some speed at the bottom of [turns] one and two. Just never really tried the fence. I knew once I got in front of him what would be best for me was to run the bottom. He ran the top and just hit a perfect corner.”

Richard Childress Racing‘s Jesse Love, the reigning series champion, finished just behind the duel up front in third place, followed by JGR teammates William Sawalich — one of four drivers among the top 10 not Chase eligible — and Taylor Gray.

Haas Factory Team‘s Sam Mayer — another eligible driver in The Chase presented by Mobil 1 — finished sixth, having turned in an impressive comeback. He won Stage 2 and led 40 laps (second to Day) but had to rally from the rear of the field after a pit-stop penalty for an uncontrolled tire during the Stage 2 break.

Non-Chase eligible drivers Jeremy Clements, William Sawalich, and Anthony Alfredo finished seventh, eighth and 10th respectively with Chase driver Austin Hill taking ninth place.

It was an especially impactful race for former series champion and the season‘s most productive team, JR Motorsports‘ Justin Allgaier. He was collected in a melee on Lap 55 with a fellow Chase competitor, Joe Gibbs Racing‘s Brandon Jones.

Just after winning the race off pit road for the restart from the first stage break, Jones‘ No. 20 Toyota had a problem and drifted up into Allgaier‘s No. 7 Chevrolet in Turn 2, cramming both into the wall. Both cars were towed back to the garage. Allgaier was able to return to the track with 84 laps remaining and made a handful of laps to move up a position in the race’s finishing order. Still, his 34th-place result dropped The Chase’s top seed from second to fourth in the standings — 31 points off the leader Creed.

MORE: O’Reilly Auto Parts Series standings | Weekend schedule: Vegas

It was only the second DNF of the season for six-race winner Allgaier, who held an enormous 229-point advantage atop the regular-season standings before the points reset for the Chase run.

“I checked up and tried to be able to sneak by him [Jones] on the outside, but it just didn‘t work out,” said Allgaier. “I hate it for everybody on the 7 team. Obviously, we‘ve had lots of speed everywhere we‘ve gone all year, but to start The Chase off like this has been pretty frustrating. But we‘ll go next week and try to win another race. Disappointing end to a day I thought we were making some headway.”

The NASCAR O‘Reilly Auto Parts Series returns to action next Saturday at Charlotte Motor Speedway with the Blue Cross NC 300 (4 p.m. ET, The CW, ESPN Unlimited, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio). This marks the first fall race on the 1.5-mile Charlotte oval since 2017, when Alex Bowman hoisted the series’ trophy driving for Chip Ganassi Racing.

NOTE: Post-race inspection is complete in the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series garage. Corey Day’s win is confirmed. The No. 20 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota was disqualified for four or more lug nuts not safe and secure and will be credited with a last-place finish (originally 35th). The Nos. 88 (one lug nut not safe and secure) and 92 (inspection failures) will lose pit stall selection for next week’s race at Charlotte.

Contenders look to gap the pretenders at Las Vegas

LAS VEGAS — There is a clear divide atop the NASCAR Cup Series standings as The Chase presented by Mobil 1 approaches its midpoint.

Kyle Larson has overtaken Denny Hamlin for the points lead, and the two rival veterans now command the championship hunt after four of 10 races in the Cup Series postseason.

Will anyone else join them as the season reaches its title-deciding fever pitch?

MORE: Weekend schedule | At-track photos: Las Vegas

Entering Sunday’s South Point 400, the top four drivers in the standings are within one race’s worth of points of each other: Larson, Hamlin, Christopher Bell (50 points behind Larson) and Joey Logano (67 points behind Larson). Larson dominated last week’s race at Kansas Speedway, earning a maximum 76-point day — a race win, both stage wins and the Xfinity Fastest Lap. He and the No. 5 team have proven they are here to defend their title with a vengeance, posting two wins, one runner-up result and a fifth-place finish in the opening four races of The Chase.

“I would love to continue to put together weekends like we have where we gain a lot of points,” Larson said Saturday, “just to stretch out (so) that way, if we do have a blowout race, you can not fall down the order a lot. But yeah, I mean that’s not guaranteed. So yeah, I mean that’s really not on my mind when I’m out there. I’m just kind of treating it as just trying to get a good practice, qualify well, get a good first stage, get a good second stage and a good third stage and then you look at the points afterwards. But yeah, it’s been a good start to The Chase, obviously at this point, and would love to keep it going.”

Hamlin entered The Chase as the No. 1 seed and is firmly in the hunt — particularly entering Las Vegas as the winner of each of the last two races in the Nevada desert. But for the first time since June, Hamlin is no longer the points leader, trailing Larson by 26 points entering Sunday’s South Point 400. And in four Chase races, Hamlin has just one top-five finish. That won’t be enough if Larson is able to maintain anything close to his current pace of 59.25 points per race.

But the true championship threats still have a chance to separate themselves from the rest of the field — and perhaps already are.

“If you can separate yourself by putting really good finishes and wins together early in a Chase, then typically, yeah, you’re going to narrow the field down and narrow the competition down,” Hamlin said. “So that goes back into the ‘do the work now, and then you check out the results later’ type of mentality. But overall, yeah, it’s all just going to work itself out however it is, and there’s kind of peaks and valleys to this that some teams had a rough maybe week or two and I think that they could end up going on a run and winning a couple and putting themselves right back in it, too. You just never know.”

Behind the quartet up front sit other stars like Ryan Blaney (-91), Ty Gibbs (-94) and Tyler Reddick (-111). With the gap widening between them and the championship frontrunners, they see that time and points are already starting to slip away.

“We’ve got to win some,” Gibbs said. “I’m gonna bet on myself. We’re gonna do it this weekend.”

Even Larson isn’t ready to count most drivers out of championship contention yet, so a victory by someone like Gibbs could heavily impact The Chase standings.

“I don’t view my gap as anything, where I think a lot of media members, it sounds like, view it that way,” Larson said. “I also don’t consider as many people out of it as it seems like everybody else does. There’s just a lot of racing left. There’s a lot of points on the table. There’s a lot of things that can happen. There’s a lot of restarts left. There’s all sorts of things. So yeah, I think with that, you just stay focused on yourself and stay focused on your team and what you’re doing during the week to improve and prepare for the upcoming race.”

What lies ahead is The Chase’s most pivotal race yet — one that will set the tone for the rest of the 2026 championship chase.

Topping the charts on intermediate tracks

Denny Hamlin is in the midst of a historic run on 1.5-mile tracks, entering Las Vegas with eight consecutive top-five finishes on intermediates — a streak that ties him for seventh-longest all-time with Jimmie Johnson.

While Hamlin has flexed his muscle on intermediates, here’s a look at how all drivers in The Chase have fared on average this season, including their best 2026 finish at a 1.5-mile track, courtesy of Racing Insights:

Speed reads

Race-day essentials:

• Las Vegas hub: Weekend information, pit stalls, additional results | Read more
• Sunday Setup: Kansas lessons inform crew chiefs for Las Vegas approach | Read more
• Paint Scheme Preview: Bright designs for the Las Vegas lights | View gallery
• Neil Paine: Can anything slow Kyle Larson’s roll? | Read more
• NASCAR Classics: Rewind with full-race replays from Las Vegas | Watch now
• Power Rankings: Christopher Bell plays crucial role in title fight | This week’s ranks

That history of Toyota dominance made Kyle Larson‘s performance in Chase race No. 4 all the more impressive at Kansas Speedway last weekend.

RELATED: Sunday’s starting lineup | At-track photos: Las Vegas

Not far behind — .565 seconds to be exact — was Austin Cindric, scoring Team Penske‘s best finish at a 1.5-mile track in 2026. The No. 2 Ford was planted inside the top five for the duration of the race, finishing the race with a 3.39 average running position, Cindric‘s best in 181 career Cup Series starts.

The performance was notable, but Cindric applied lessons from the previous intermediate race at Chicagoland Speedway, nearly three months earlier. A 50-minute practice session in the Windy City allowed Cindric‘s crew chief Brian Wilson to make some swings.

“Last week in Kansas, it was great to see that [progress] continued,” Wilson, crew chief of the No. 2 car told NASCAR.com, with teammate Ryan Blaney also banking a top five. “What do you take from Kansas and apply to Vegas? There’s like three or four things that we’ve done since the last time that we raced here in Vegas that we think adds some potential to the car.”

Sin City presents an entirely different challenge for Sunday‘s South Point 400 (5:30 p.m. ET, USA Network, HBO Max, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio). Not only is the ambient temperature nearly 30 degrees warmer this weekend than Kansas, but the bumps over the tunnel through Turns 1 and 2 can unsettle a car, while the opposite end of the track is considerably smoother. Still, despite the stark differences between Las Vegas and the Midwest track, Wilson believes that strength could translate to another strong showing for the No. 2 team this weekend as the powerhouse organization continues to hone in on bettering its 1.5-mile program.

“Where we started the year is not where anyone in the group wanted to be,” Wilson admitted of Penske‘s intermediate effort. “So, everyone’s been working really hard to close the gap. I think these next [two] weeks are really going to tell the tale. It was great to see that we were closer.

“I don’t know that we’re necessarily where we want to be, but I do feel like the last week was any indication we’ve closed the gap.”

One notable difference between Chicagoland and Kansas was the addition of struts to the front splitter, a change competition officials implemented ahead of the mid-July race at North Wilkesboro Speedway. Coupled with Joe Gibbs Racing‘s four entries combining to lead just 25 laps, it was enough to raise questions about whether the adjustment had altered the competitive landscape.

MORE: Hamlin surges to Vegas pole | Weekend schedule

Chris Gayle, crew chief for Hamlin‘s No. 11 Toyota, says to hold the phone. While acknowledging that Larson‘s No. 5 team put together a flawless race and executed at every turn at Kansas, Gayle isn‘t willing to declare that Toyota has taken a step back at intermediates based on such a small sample size. Hamlin, after all, brings an eight-race top-five streak at 1.5-mile tracks into Las Vegas, tied for the seventh-longest such streak in Cup Series history.

“That same rule was applied for Darlington. I think it’s implied that it has been because last week the storyline was the Toyotas aren’t quite as strong as they’ve been,” a fiery Gayle said, “and that’s the first intermediate we’ve been to since Indy.

“I feel like it’s, you go to all these short tracks and things where the industry goes, ‘These are not as important aero tracks.‘ And then the first time we go back to what we deem an aero track — even though we kind of excluded Darlington from that judgment — I think you need a bigger sample size than one to say that. We do understand how it affected us, but we never understand how it affects others. And it would be naïve of us to assume it doesn’t affect others, too.”

With the No. 11 team entering Las Vegas 26 points behind Larson for the top spot, Gayle knows it‘s critical to have track position throughout the South Point 400. Hamlin has won the two most recent events in the Mojave Desert, rebounding from a pit-road penalty to still lead more than half the race in March.

“We need points relative to [Larson],” Gayle noted. “So, we need to start up front and stack all the stage points and potentially win if we can. I think we’ll know after this race and Charlotte — we‘re going to know who’s really in the thick of this thing and probably the number of cars that have a shot. I think we need two very strong runs to feel like we’re still in the thick of it.”

The weekend started with a bang, as Hamlin won his fifth pole of the season, tying his most for a single season (2013 and 2025). There were multiple tire failures in practice, including Chase drivers Tyler Reddick and Ty Gibbs, both of whom rebounded for top-five qualifying efforts. Josh Berry and Noah Gragson each wrecked hard after having a tire let go.

Jones lost control of his No. 20 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota in the 55th of 201 laps in Saturday’s Focused Health 302, shortly after a restart that began Stage 2 at the 1.5-mile track. His sudden veer toward the outside wall collected the No. 7 JR Motorsports Chevrolet of Allgaier, wedging both cars against the barrier. Both drivers were evaluated and released from the infield care center.

RELATED: Race results | At-track photos: Vegas

Allgaier finished 34th, initially one spot ahead of Jones, who was sidelined by the melee. Allgaier’s crew made extensive repairs to get his No. 7 Chevy back on track for two extra laps, gaining him an extra finishing position and one extra point in The Chase presented by Mobil 1. But Jones was disqualified after his No. 20 entry was found with four or more loose lug nuts after its departure from the race, relegating him to last in the 36-car field. The penalty not only gave him last-place points, but stripped Jones of the seven stage points he had earned for finishing fourth at the first break.

Jones began the second stage in the lead after quick pit work helped him gain three spots, but the JGR driver had voiced concerns that the left-front wheel may not have been fully fastened. Allgaier had restarted eighth.

Jones said the pit-stop miscue caused a major vibration as his No. 20 Supra tried to round Turn 1, and he lamented the lapse in execution after his care center check-up.

“Yeah, shoot, it’s just the pit stop,” Jones said. “I mean, they’re trying to get me out front, I guess, and it’s just right now every mistake like this is a detriment to the season. It’s like, give up a half-second to maybe just maintain. It’s like, you just don’t have to hit the home runs right now, and I don’t know, I don’t know what we need to do better other than just execute from the the team’s standpoint. Unfortunately, I’m not a finger-pointer at all. I mean, there’s always things that I could do better on all these races, but at the end of the day, it’s all these little decisions of staying out and not pitting, and then having mistakes like this on pit road with the loose wheels. It’s like constant, nonstop things that are out of my control that I can’t figure out how to get to stop.

“So it’s difficult when it’s like this. It’s really hard to stop the bleeding. You see it time and time again with other cars and other teams and drivers. It’s whoever can not make mistakes, and the guys that make mistakes end up not winning, and they end up falling out like we currently are, unfortunately. So we’ve just got to keep pushing, though. We got to keep going race to race, can’t be a quitter. You can’t give up in these moments.”

Allgaier said he’d hoped Jones would have slowed, rather than attempt to ride out the loose-wheel issue.

“I mean, in that scenario, like you’ve already had a couple corners, maybe you just pull down and get out of the way, right?” Allgaier said. “Because when you look at three- and four-wide all the way, I mean, I think we were three- and four-wide all the way through (turns) three and four. The instinct is that you want to stay in it and keep going and maybe it’ll get better, but the law of averages says it usually doesn’t, so I don’t know. It’s disappointing.”

Allgaier, the 2024 series champion, entered the nine-race Chase as the top seed. Four races in, the 40-year-old veteran has slipped to fourth place in the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series, including Saturday’s two-spot drop after his early exit. He now ranks 30 points behind series points leader Sheldon Creed, who placed 13th as the final driver on the lead lap.

Jones entered the postseason as the No. 6 seed. He’s now 11th, 137 points off the top — 23 points worse than before he started Saturday’s race.

“I just, I hate it for everybody involved,” Jones said. “I hate it for the partners, for the team. I mean, they’re not trying to mess up. I know that, right? They’re not trying to put me in these bad situations. It just seems like we just can’t ever make the right decision currently.”

The 2026 season was the final year of a five-year driving contract for Keselowski, who joined the team as a driver and co-owner ahead of the 2022 campaign. Keselowski hoped to continue his driving career well into the future while RFK wanted him to move into the lead competition role more promptly.

RELATED: Sunday’s starting lineup | At-track photos: Vegas

Within the last month, discussions between the two sides broke down and Keselowski‘s future became clearer. At the end of the 2026 season, he will be looking for his next opportunity.

“We wanted to make sure organizationally that not only we set ourselves up for near-term success, but really long-term sustainable success,” Bowers said to a room full of media members at Las Vegas. “And so, when we started looking at what the next three years look like for us and beyond, it was clear that we wanted Brad to start focusing more on his role in competition.

“For us, we wanted that to be a natural transition over the next two to three years for Brad. I think he wants to continue to drive much longer than that, and that’s fine. We applaud that. Like I said, we want to give Brad, because we have such immense respect and appreciation for Brad, every opportunity to do all the things he wants to do in his career. But that’s what makes it so hard, right? This is a business, and we just weren’t aligned with that, and that happens. We just wanted to make the competition side more of a focus. He wanted to focus more on the driving side. We get that, and that’s why it took us so long to get here.”

Keselowski wouldn‘t delve into the specifics of his departure, though he remains appreciative of the opportunity to dip his toes into Cup Series ownership with RFK. He doesn‘t consider himself sentimental, but knew the writing was on the wall that he wouldn‘t be returning to the organization in 2027 over the past 30 days.

“It‘s been a hell of a ride,” Keselowski stated in his opening remarks, swarmed by the media. “I‘ve gotten to enjoy everything I‘ve gotten to do with RFK — and my career is not over by any means. There‘s still a lot of things to work out. I can‘t really go into details of how we got to where we are at least at this time until a few more things develop.”

Bowers said he was surprised that the two sides couldn‘t come to an agreement to extend Keselowski‘s tenure within the organization. He acknowledged that there were zero arguments between the 2012 champion and Roush Enterprises and Fenway Sports Group over the direction of the company.

Keselowski wasn‘t as perplexed, mentioning: “There‘s a lot of things that surprise me, but this was not one of them.”

MORE: Weekend schedule | Projected results for Las Vegas

Keselowski remains interested in being part of an ownership group in the future, saying it‘s “doubtful” this marks the end of his time as a team owner in the sport.

“I still love the sport and want to be around long after my driving days are done,” Keselowski said, defiantly.

Bowers stated a solid foundation was laid internally for RFK to succeed in the future. He credits that to Keselowski‘s vision for the organization as he helped change the culture internally upon arriving in 2022.

“We feel we’ve gone to an area where we’ve become more competitive than we’ve been historically,” Bowers added. “Now it’s time to take the next step. We have a great deal of belief that we have the right people to do that and look forward to adding additional talent to help us get there.”

One of Keselowski‘s key hires was driver Ryan Preece ahead of the 2025 season. Preece, who won his way into The Chase presented by Mobil 1 in the regular-season finale at Daytona International Speedway, considers Keselowski a great teammate and someone who helped the New Englander find his voice. He‘s not concerned about the upcoming change at RFK.

“This is an opportunity to keep building the house, man. It‘s not going to get torn down,” Preece stated. “I see a lot of glass-half-empty things and I‘m a glass-half-full guy. We have a really strong foundation at RFK and right now. I‘m a racer; it‘s taken me too damn long to win races and I feel like we want to keep going that way.”

Bowers, who leads a company of roughly 200 employees, said he isn‘t concerned the change will fracture relationships within the organization. While he credits Keselowski for helping establish RFK‘s new culture, he emphasized that changing the organization‘s trajectory has been a collective effort.

“Culture is not led by one person; it’s led by many, and a lot of that credit goes to all the people in our organization who see the vision of what we’re trying to accomplish,” Bowers said. “It starts at the top. I’ve got a mentor in our business who always says the best recipe for success in professional sports is three ingredients: ownership, ownership, and ownership. And so, when you’ve got great ownership at the top, we trickle down the communication of we want to be great, and this is what greatness looks like in our eyes, and we want you to be a part of that.”

Keselowski says he‘s received multiple phone calls from various industry members and was pleasantly surprised by the feedback he received on social media since the announcement on Tuesday. He has yet to sign anything for the 2027 season, believing there will be multiple options on the table.

“I‘m open to everything,” Keselowski elaborated, admitting that running a full-time season in the Craftsman Truck Series would pique his interest, potentially becoming the first driver to win championships in all three national touring series. “I‘m going to look at the best opportunity that comes at me and then make a decision.”

The 36-time Cup winner hopes to have his immediate future secured in the next two months. He‘s not sweating his driving career, believing there is enough interest throughout the sport to find a new home.

As for the legacy Keselowski leaves at RFK, he‘s proud of helping transform the organization from a “tier-three team” into one on the cusp of becoming a “tier one” operation within the Ford camp.

“I‘m really proud about the things that we‘ve done and the people that have been able to work with and see grow and develop and some of the turnaround from the company and team. It‘s a thrill of a lifetime to be a part of,” Keselowski said. “You always hate to leave that, lose that, whatever that might be. It is part of life. It‘s kind of like leaving high school, but that‘s where we‘re at.”

Keselowski will start 16th in Sunday‘s South Point 400 (5:30 p.m. ET, USA Network, HBO Max, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).

The NASCAR Cup Series rolls to Las Vegas Motor Speedway on Sunday (5:30 p.m. ET, USA Network, HBO Max, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) as The Chase presented by Mobil 1 reaches the halfway mark. Once the South Point 400 is completed, just five races remain to crown the 2026 champion. Las Vegas is the second of three consecutive races at 1.5-mile circuits, and like last weekend at Kansas Speedway, it could shake up the postseason.

RELATED: Starting lineup | At-track photos

But unlike the first three Chase races, Kansas wasn’t defined by chaos. Kyle Larson dominated, leading 235 laps and scoring a perfect 76-point day — the first in this points format. That elevated him 26 points ahead of Denny Hamlin for the series lead, and as evidenced by a trio of victories in Vegas, he’ll likely be a factor again on Sunday. A finish of fifth or better would give Larson five straight top fives to open the postseason, matching a feat Joey Logano accomplished in 2014.

Read on to see drivers worth monitoring over 267 laps, as well as Racing Insights’ full projections for the key Chase bout.

DRIVERS TO WATCH

DENNY HAMLIN: A Denny Hamlin victory at a 1.5-miler is seemingly a coin flip these days. The last two times the Cup Series has visited Vegas, that coin has landed on heads. The No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing driver scored a key playoff victory there last fall, and backed it up again this spring with his first dub of 2026. For Hamlin to keep up with Larson, he’ll need another stellar Vegas showing. Hamlin has finished fourth or better in each of the last eight races on 1.5-mile tracks, with an average finish of 2.4. His last three Cup victories all came in succession at Nashville, Michigan and Pocono — three somewhat comparable tracks even though they all feature different sizes and characteristics. The Chase has been by no means dominant for the future Hall of Famer, but that could change this weekend as he continues pursuing his first title.

CHRISTOPHER BELL: With how well he’s historically performed at intermediates, it’s almost hard to believe that Bell hasn’t won at Las Vegas before. He led 155 laps in this race two years ago before pit strategy relegated him to runner-up, his second P2 finish in Sin City. Bell finished inside the top five in five of the last seven Las Vegas races, as well as three of the last four. Widening the scope, he’s placed inside the top 10 in nine of the last 11 1.5-mile races. Despite finishing sixth last weekend at Kansas, the Oklahoman dropped 33 points to Larson up top, now facing a 50-point deficit. A strong run for Bell could launch him back into the championship discussion.

TEAM PENSKE: All three drivers from the Roger Penske-owned organization are on here for different reasons, but the common denominator is that they need strong weekends to remain in the championship hunt. Austin Cindric is on a career heater, averaging an eighth-place finish over the last seven races and coming home second last weekend at Kansas — his first top five at a 1.5-mile track. He does, however, own a pair of P6 finishes at Las Vegas, and enters the race minus-140. Joey Logano is a machine in Sin City, winning four times — the most among active drivers — with two of them coming in 2022 and 2024 (remember the even-year thing?). However, Logano has generally struggled at 1.5-mile circuits this year with a 20.3 average finish, and is 67 points behind the lead after finishing 20th at Kansas. Finally, Ryan Blaney has had plenty of lost wages in Vegas, averaging a P30 over his last four trips here. He has just four top 10s in the last nine 1.5-mile events, and desperately needs to stop the bleeding after two DNFs in the first four Chase races. Blaney sits 91 points back of Larson.

MORE: What to Watch: Las Vegas

FULL PROJECTED RESULTS FOR SOUTH POINT 400 (5:30 p.m. ET, USA)

Hamlin‘s No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota turned a fast lap of 186.787 mph around the 1.5-mile Las Vegas high banks — topping his JGR teammate, Ty Gibbs in the No. 54 Toyota by a slight 0.017-second margin. JGR‘s Christopher Bell and Chase Briscoe and 23XI Racing‘s Tyler Reddick rounded out the top five in that order.

RELATED: Sunday’s starting lineup | At-track photos: Las Vegas

It marks only the second time Toyota has swept the top five qualifying positions. The first time came at Indianapolis last season. It marks the JGR team‘s first ever top-four sweep. It‘s Hamlin‘s 53rd career pole position and is his 19th top-10 start through the opening 30 races.

“It is important and the races we‘ve really succeeded well here, we‘ve started up front,” the 45-year-old Virginian said, conceding he was more nervous going into this session because of the extreme heat. After weeks of poor weather and cancelled qualifying sessions, Saturday‘s edition took place under sunny Nevada skies and temperatures in the mid-90s.

“Today was executed by the team perfectly with how we approached the week and the adjustments we made to the car for temperatures seemed to be really good changes. I couldn‘t have asked for today to go a whole lot better than it did.”

Championship-eligible drivers filled the first 14 positions on the speed chart. Reigning series champion and current championship leader, Hendrick Motorsports’ Kyle Larson, was sixth fastest in the No. 5 Chevrolet, with Team Penske Ford driver Austin Cindric, Hendrick‘s William Byron, 23XI Racing‘s Bubba Wallace and Spire Motorsports‘ Carson Hocevar rounding out the top 10 on the grid.

Team Penske teammates Ryan Blaney (20th) and Joey Logano (23rd) were the only outliers. They come into the race ranked fourth and fifth in championship, but will have to make their way forward. Logano‘s four Las Vegas wins tie him with NASCAR Hall of Famer Jimmie Johnson for most all-time.

Hamlin is a three-time Las Vegas winner and has hoisted a trophy in Victory Lane the last two races at the track. A third straight win this weekend would match an all-time mark also held by Johnson. He‘s won four times in 2026, but not since earning a three-race string of trophies at Nashville, Michigan and Pocono from May 31-June 14.

Hamlin trails Larson by only 26 points after four races of the 10-race Chase schedule. Bell is third, 50 points back and Logano is fourth, 67 points off the pace.

“This sport is week by week, and we’re all guilty of overreacting on Mondays about what we just saw over the weekend,” Hamlin said of predicting the race vibe on Sunday. “But, you know, the 5 car (Larson) could easily just drive right up through there and pass us and win the race again. You never know, or we could do the same thing he did last week [in a dominating win at Kansas Speedway].

“We just don’t know,” Hamlin said offering a slight smile at the Vegas venue. “If we all knew, then you guys should go place your bets and go make a lot of money.”

Practice recap: Byron tops the Vegas board

William Byron rose to the top of the Cup Series practice leaderboard, laying down a fast lap of 182.235 mph as Hendrick Motorsports drivers went 1-2 in the opening on-track session.

Byron’s No. 24 Chevrolet was just 0.065 seconds ahead of the No. 5 Chevrolet of Kyle Larson, who posted a lap of 181.837 mph. Joe Gibbs Racing teammates Denny Hamlin and Chase Briscoe were third and fourth, respectively, and Daniel Suárez completed the top five in Spire Motorsports’ No. 7 Chevy.

MORE: Practice results | Weekend schedule: Vegas

Josh Berry crashed with approximately 18 minutes left in the 50-minute session, when his No. 21 Wood Brothers Racing Ford spun at the exit of Turn 2 and made significant contact with the outside retaining wall. Berry, who was evaluated and released from the infield care center, said a tire problem caused him to lose control of his car, which sustained heavy left-side damage.

Noah Gragson’s No. 4 Front Row Motorsports Ford also wrecked with four minutes remaining in practice, backing into the wall in Turn 2. He drove back to the garage and was evaluated and released.

Tyler Reddick also forced a stoppage 13 minutes into the session when he brought his No. 45 23XI Racing Toyota to a halt on the track’s apron with a flat left-rear tire. With the car’s lifter system deployed, Reddick drove back to pit road for service.

Fellow Chase drivers Chris Buescher and Ty Gibbs also reported having tire issues during practice.

Larson topped the consecutive 10-lap averages chart, with Briscoe second and Suárez third.

Contributing: Staff reports

NASCAR Cup Series

South Point 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway on Sunday (5:30 p.m. ET, USA Network, HBO Max, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).

RELATED: How to watch NASCAR on USA Network

NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series

Focused Health 302 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway on Saturday (7:30 p.m. ET, The CW, ESPN Unlimited, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).

RELATED: How to watch NASCAR on The CW, ESPN Unlimited

RELATED: Full weekend schedule | TV listings | Goodyear tire setup

NASCAR Cup Series

Race day: Sunday at 5:30 p.m. ET on USA Network and HBO Max. The categories listed below will be filled out with links as the information becomes available.

Tires: Eleven total sets — eight new sets for the race, two for practice and one for qualifying that transfers to the race.

Entry List
Qualifying Order
Practice Results
Practice Lap Averages
Practice Lap Times
Starting Lineup
Pit Stalls
Stage 1 Results
Stage 2 Results
Race Results

NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series

Race day: Saturday at 7:30 p.m. ET on The CW and ESPN Unlimited. The categories listed below will be filled out with links as the information becomes available.

Tires: Six total sets — four new sets for the race, one for practice and one for qualifying that transfers to the race.

Entry List
Qualifying Order
Practice Results
Practice Lap Averages
Practice Lap Times
Starting Lineup
Pit Stalls
Stage 1 Results
Stage 2 Results
Race Results

Creed, who turned 29 years old Wednesday, makes the move after two seasons with Haas Factory Team’s No. 00 group. Creed replaces Dean Thompson, who will shift to the Haas team next year as it expands to a three-car effort.

RELATED: Key figures in Silly Season | Weekend schedule: Las Vegas

Creed has rocketed to the top of the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series standings after posting two victories in the opening three races of The Chase presented by Mobil 1. The postseason’s next round is scheduled later Saturday, when the Focused Health 302 (7:30 p.m. ET, The CW, ESPN Unlimited, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) kicks off at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

“I’ve had the privilege to race, obviously, for RCR (Richard Childress Racing), JGR (Joe Gibbs Racing), now Haas, run good with all of them, but finally found Victory Lane this year, and numerous times now, being the points leader, is massive for us,” Creed said Saturday from the 1.5-mile track. “I think, for the 00 group, for my team, but yeah, looking down the road, obviously, haven’t gotten a Cup opportunity, and obviously, that’s still my end goal. But if I don’t ever get that call, I felt like Sam’s is somewhere I can race for the next 15 years and make a good living and be able to raise my family and, yeah, just try to build a good life.”

Sam Hunt Racing also announced that crew chief Kris Bowen will return for his fifth season with the organization, which first launched at the end of the 2019 campaign. SHR also indicated that the rest of its driver and sponsor lineup for 2027 will be announced later.

“It‘s huge,” Hunt said of landing Creed. “Sam Hunt Racing’s kind of been built a little bit different than a lot of teams. It’s been progress every single year. I felt like for us to take the next big step that we wanted to take, having a guy, like Sheldon make a home with us — with us and the Toyota family — was the move I needed to make, and I think I strive to be better in my role as an owner every year, and the opportunity presented itself, and I was able to work on this for a little bit and be able to go to Sheldon with the deal that not only helps him on track, but off track. Yeah, it‘s the logical next step for our race team. I’m just thankful for all the partners that kind of help with this together.”

All three of Creed’s O’Reilly Series wins have come in this year’s breakout season, his fifth as a full-time competitor on the circuit. He was infamously a 15-time runner-up over the course of his O’Reilly career before breaking through, and his most recent victories have helped lift him to an 11-point advantage in the standings over former series champ Justin Allgaier.

MORE: Creed makes case as title contender

Creed admitted that his departure wasn’t necessarily something he sought out. “I have zero complaints, and I wouldn’t say it was my first choice to move on,” Creed said, “but unfortunately, business has to make sense and that overrules results and performance on track sometimes.”

Creed is an eight-time winner in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series, and he was crowned as the tour’s champion in 2020. The California native also won the 2018 title in the ARCA Menards Series as part of a four-win season.

The ceremony will take place at the start/finish line of the 1.5-mile track in Concord, North Carolina, following the conclusion of the Craftsman Truck Series Chase race presented by Mobil 1 and will be televised on FS1.

The ceremony will be free for fans to attend at the track. Fans who bought tickets for the Truck Series race will also be welcome to stay and move toward the start/finish line for the Celebration of Life as the NASCAR community celebrates the late Busch and his legacy through stories, memories, iconic moments and the impact he made on the sport that epitomized the nickname “Rowdy.”

RELATED: Busch through the years | Why Busch‘s legacy is everywhere

Busch‘s widow, Samantha, will be onstage to remember her husband.

A handful of NASCAR drivers and personalities will also participate in the Celebration of Life, including NASCAR on FOX play-by-play announcer Mike Joy, Joe Gibbs, Christopher Bell, Noah Gragson, Daniel Suárez, Kyle Larson and Austin Dillon, who will all share memories of Busch and what his legacy means to them.

Busch drove for Gibbs in the No. 18 Toyota from 2008-2022, earning two Cup Series championships and 56 race wins in NASCAR‘s premier series.

Bell, Gragson and Suárez all drove for Busch‘s former Truck Series team, Kyle Busch Motorsports. Bell won the Truck Series championship for KBM in 2017.

Larson competed against Busch in both the O‘Reilly Auto Parts Series and Cup Series over the last decade. Busch gave the “Tiny Kyle” nickname to Larson, and Sunday at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, Larson donned the moniker above the door of the No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet that had a throwback paint scheme to Busch‘s time at Hendrick from 2005-2007.

Larson and Busch dueled in one of NASCAR‘s greatest finishes in 2018 at Chicagoland Speedway when they made contact multiple times on the final lap with “Rowdy” ultimately taking the checkered flag.

Dillon was Busch‘s teammate at Richard Childress Racing from 2023 until Busch‘s sudden passing on May 21.

During the ceremony, 10 of Busch‘s most iconic race cars will be on display and a drone show will take place at the end of the ceremony.

The element of surprise is rooted in nearly two decades as a winner and champion at NASCAR’s highest levels, and it’s also just a guiding principle of his life.

“I probably don’t fit into any mold in this sport,” Keselowski told USA Today Sports in 2011. “I enjoy not being predictable or easy to get. I like to challenge conventional wisdom because almost every success has come from doing the opposite of what I was told. It’s like I’m attracted to things that people say I can’t do.”

RELATED: Keselowski departing RFK after 2026 

He sent shock waves again this week with the revelation that the 2026 season would be his last driving for RFK Racing, which announced his addition as a co-owner in 2021 before he took the wheel the following year. (RFK and Keselowski have yet to determine the next steps regarding his ownership interest.)

It’s a bombshell departure that no one saw coming, and it raises untold questions about what happened and what’s to come.

But it might not even rank first on the long list of earth-shattering, game-changing moments that Keselowski has delivered since bursting on the scene as a brash and fearless superstar who loves challenging authority as much as chasing checkered flags.

The first Millennial champion in Cup Series history defeated eventual seven-time champion Jimmie Johnson in a massive upset in 2012. Not content with just driving for a racing empire, Keselowski then stunned the world with his gambit to leave Team Penske, determined to leave his own mark as a car owner.

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He shut down his Truck team with little warning as the 2017 season ended… and then turned its 70,000-square-foot shop into Keselowski Advanced Manufacturing, a 3-D printing company with a heavy clientele in the space industry.

He startled cyberspace during the 2012 Daytona 500 by posting a photo of a jet dryer fire, the first tweet sent from inside a car during a NASCAR race. (Later that season, he tweeted again during a red flag at Phoenix Raceway, drawing a $25,000 fine for violating NASCAR’s ban on cell phones in race cars, which had been instituted after Daytona.)

Behind the wheel, he has embraced the sneak attack to great effect.

In the first victory of his Cup career, he was among the first to figure out tandem racing at Talladega Superspeedway and then breathtakingly refused to yield to a block by Carl Edwards. In 2012 at Talladega, he used Kyle Busch’s help to pass Matt Kenseth with two laps remaining, then surprised Busch with a move he’d “dreamed about” making on the final lap (“now everyone’s seen it, and they know it works”). He has won many times with unusual strategies and fuel conservation plays that few thought possible.

In everyday life, Keselowski has long been the iconoclast whose lifelong struggle is leading the establishment away from the mundane.

MORE: 2027 plans uncertain for Keselowski

He spoke proudly of convincing Roger Penske, the billionaire magnate whose adherence to corporate uniforms is legendary, to wear jeans to the office.

After giving him his big break with a ride in 2007, Dale Earnhardt Jr. once joked that Keselowski’s restless mind generated about 20 wild ideas daily – most were hare-brained schemes but at least a couple were always brilliant and worthy of implementation.

The cutting-edge whiz kid was driving a Tesla Roadster 15 years ago (and had to hide the carbon-fiber marvel from the general public for fear of getting sideways with Detroit’s finest).

He has twice raced through serious injuries, scoring one of his most remarkable wins at Pocono Raceway in 2011 on a broken left ankle suffered in a crash four days earlier.

Brad Keselowski has always been full of surprises – with one dependable caveat.

His next stunning move is always planned well ahead of time.

He knows that even the most resourceful racer can be caught out without options for survival.

As a rising star in his early 20s, he was deeply affected by watching his family’s racing business collapse as his own career took off with a big push from K Automotive.

The team was founded by Bob Keselowski, who was idolized by his youngest son (“He was Dale Earnhardt to me”) as the prototypical hardscrabble driver-owner.

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“My dad always did more with less,” Brad once said. “He dropped out of high school, but he could do complex math equations that explained why his race cars worked. You have to work a lot harder to learn things on your own.”

The Michigan-bred blue-collar work ethic went only so far for Bob, whose team won truck races but lost in the boardroom politics of maintaining the necessary manufacturer support and sponsorship to stay in business.

Those lessons were never lost on Brad, who bore witness to the team’s credit cards being declined at hotels. He worked in a shop that saved money by operating without the heat on during harsh Midwestern winters.

“It was looking at the faces of people that worked with and for you and knowing you weren’t going to be able to pay them that month, and they had families,” he said. “There were real repercussions.”

He paid off his parents’ six-figure debts after they sold all of K Automotive’s assets to avoid bankruptcy. Then he became a savvy, racing-oriented businessman who succeeded in ways that his late father didn’t because he always found another unexpected play to make.

Yet his current situation seems borderline intractable for conjuring another career jump that leaves NASCAR in disbelief.

The circumstances around his exit from the No. 6 Ford have cast doubt on how Keselowski could possibly have another trick up his sleeve.

The landing spots for a Cup ride seem limited, even though his trademark confidence is evident.

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“I’m nowhere near ready to be done as a driver,” Keselowski said in a statement. “I still have a lot I want to accomplish in this sport, and I’m looking forward to what comes next.”

Whatever the future holds, one thing seems certain.

His next step won’t be the last surprise from a star who has made a Hall of Fame career of keeping the competition on its toes.

Yet a third of the way through the postseason, that narrative has now shifted in favor of the hottest driver: Sheldon Creed.

RELATED: O’Reilly Series standings | Las Vegas weekend schedule

The No. 00 Haas Factory Team pilot scored the victory two weeks ago at Bristol Motor Speedway, using a four-tire call with 20 to go and avoiding late chaos at the front for his second win in three Chase races. It doubled as the third of his career — all of which came this season — and put him 11 points ahead of Allgaier for the series lead. All put together, Creed is on a 1-2-1 finishing stretch to open the postseason. Allgaier paced the series after each race from Phoenix Raceway in March to Darlington Raceway in September.

For a driver who finished runner-up a record 15 times before scoring an O’Reilly Series victory, the September breakout might seem like a surprise to an outsider. He had stints with Richard Childress Racing and Joe Gibbs Racing that resulted in a points finish no higher than sixth. But Creed believed all along that, eventually, he would see the fruit of his labor.

“I feel like I always knew that I could do it,” Creed told NASCAR.com earlier this week before Saturday at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, the fourth of nine Chase races (7:30 p.m. ET, The CW, ESPN Unlimited, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio). “For whatever reason, they just come a little easier, or they just come a little more natural after that (first win). I knew that if I could just finally break through that, at least I hoped that they would come easier, and they kind of seemed to do that the last two times.”

That’s the old adage in NASCAR, and it’s seemingly valid. Coming in his 138th start, Creed prevailed in a wild finish at EchoPark Speedway in February after five-time track winner Austin Hill went sideways in the final set of corners. The victory was long in the works for the 2020 NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series champion, who had gone nearly five years without a win at any level of NASCAR. And that opened the floodgates … eventually.

Seven-plus months later came win No. 2 in quite impressive fashion. He led the final 49 laps at Darlington, often coined as the toughest track on the circuit, to open The Chase strong after Allgaier suffered late handling issues and finished 17th.

That win, along with the Bristol triumph, felt even more rewarding than in the draft at EchoPark.

“Everyone looks at it maybe a little different, but yeah, winning at a drafting track is cool, and it’s really hard to do. But to win anywhere else, it’s a lot harder,” Creed said. “I really just wanted to win somewhere where you had to drive the race car and somewhere that’s hard to drive the car.

“I feel like we’ve been building toward this for — I don’t want to say just this season, but the back half of last season, we’ve just slowly been building and building, and we’re just now starting to reap the rewards of all the work.”

But even between his first and second victories, Creed never eased the throttle. He finished inside the top 10 16 times during the regular season, including a stretch of nine straight where he placed no worse than seventh. After the EchoPark win, Creed dropped lower than fourth in points just once.

That model of consistency isn’t new for Jonathan Toney, who crew-chiefs the No. 00 Chevrolet. Before pairing with Creed last year, he spent two seasons leading Cole Custer at then-called Stewart-Haas Racing, resulting in a championship and a second-place finish in points.

“Personality-wise, driving style, I think they’re very, very similar. I don’t know that I necessarily anticipated that off the bat,” the fourth-year shot-caller told NASCAR.com. “The way they drive the cars, just being consistent, not putting themselves in a bad spot in occasions that they could, and then staying around at the end of the race and maximizing the days … going from Cole to Sheldon has almost been a natural transition, and we’ve just continued to work on and hone on things very similar to what we would have done for Cole when working with Sheldon.”

And for a crew chief as accomplished as Toney in such a short period of time, pushing Creed over the hump and into the championship limelight is admittedly a career highlight.

“He’s worked so hard and has been part of some really good teams that has helped mold him and turn him into the young man that he is and the race car driver that he’s become,” Toney said. “We’ve benefitted from those times, for sure, the learning lessons that he’s been through. I think that now, the last few weeks and this year, the three (wins) this year have kind of fell his way finally, and it’s been very rewarding to be part of that for sure.

MORE: Sheldon Creed driver page | Haas Factory Team

“There’s a genuine respect there between us and everybody on the team … that’s a key component. I think we got confidence in one another that we got each other’s best interest in mind, so to speak. So I think if you put that combination together, that’s just a good recipe for a relationship.”

Creed says that Haas is his favorite organization that he’s driven for. His bond with Toney is a huge reason for that.

“Just because he’s awesome,” Creed said, laughing. “He’s just really good at his job, kind of reading the driver and listening. Like honestly, I feel like he’s listened to me way more than any of my other crew chiefs on what I asked for in the race car, and we went through some paths that I didn’t like with the car, and then we’ve kind of just hit on things this year that I’ve really liked.

“The way we work together and get along with my teammate (Sam Mayer), I feel like we have very similar feedback to the race cars, which is a good thing. If we’re saying different things, that makes it harder to lead a direction for the guys to work on things and make the cars faster, so I feel like all of that’s just been in sync really well, and it’s a place I’ve fit in really well.”

Creed and Toney have spent nearly two seasons building to this point. But now it is time to hammer down. Fresh after an off week, the O’Reilly Series finishes with a stretch of six straight races — three of which are at intermediates, including the finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway. Creed feels the pace he showed at Darlington could translate well to Homestead, but just needs to stay within 25 points of the series lead.

MORE: O’Reilly Auto Parts Series schedule

Those might be modest expectations for the driver leading the series. But Creed entered the season thinking “everything would have to go well” to even contend for the title. He’s here now, though, and a title would make him the first to ever win championships in the ARCA Menards Series, Truck Series and O’Reilly Series — something Creed said he’s certainly thinking about.

“I just try not to change anything and just have a lot of fun and enjoy being at the track,” the 29-year-old said of his mindset. “The way I try to race everyone, like maybe at the end of races you would see more aggression out of me, but I kind of go with the opposite approach of just trying to be super clean and not run into anybody and keep the fenders on it.”

Said Toney: “Just go do what we can do and control what we can control, and just do what we’ve been doing. That is a very talented group of drivers over at (JR Motorsports) and a very talented group of people that’s building those race cars and coming to the race track and executing on a weekend basis. I enjoy competition and love competing against people that bring out the best in you.”

Toyota is back on top at an intermediate track. For just the second time in the manufacturer‘s history, Toyota swept the top five spots in qualifying, matching its feat from Indianapolis Motor Speedway in 2025. Hendrick Motorsports teammates Kyle Larson and William Byron paced the field on the short run, while Tyler Reddick was more than a tenth of a second ahead of the field on a 20-lap stint. Spire Motorsports teammates Carson Hocevar and Daniel Suárez also showed contending pace, while Austin Cindric could be in the mix for the second consecutive weekend. Regardless, nothing is changing with my lineup from earlier in the week.

Starting five: Denny Hamlin, Kyle Larson, William Byron, Chase Briscoe, Christopher Bell.
Garage: Tyler Reddick.

It was Kyle Larson versus the field at Kansas Speedway, and the two-time Cup Series champion won for the second time in three weeks. Next up is Las Vegas Motor Speedway amid a crucial three-race stretch featuring three intermediate tracks. Expect the same cast of characters to be in the mix in the Mojave Desert, as Larson, Denny Hamlin and Joey Logano have combined to win 10 of the last 17 races here. 

Returning to Fastlane this year is my weekly NASCAR 36 for 36 pick, where you can come play along. It’s a season-long points battle introduced in 2024 where strategy is the primary emphasis. With 36 chartered cars and 36 races on the 2026 schedule, players can choose each car once for the duration of the season. 

RELATED: NASCAR Fantasy Live hub | Play 36 for 36

MUST START

Driver: Kyle Larson, Hendrick Motorsports, No. 5 Chevrolet
Selections remaining: 2
Comment: Vintage Larson from 2021 was on display at Kansas, crushing the field for 235 of 267 laps. Now The Chase presented by Mobil 1 heads to another notable track for the two-time champion, placing inside the top 10 in 75% of his starts (15 out of 20) at Las Vegas. He has finished first or second in five of the nine Next Gen races here. 

Driver: Denny Hamlin, Joe Gibbs Racing, No. 11 Toyota
Selections remaining: 2
Comment: Compared to Larson, Hamlin had a quiet third-place run at Kansas, losing 25 points to the points leader. Hamlin will aim to become just the second driver, joining Jimmie Johnson, to hit the jackpot in three consecutive visits to Sin City. He has eight straight finishes of fourth or better at 1.5-mile venues. 

Driver: William Byron, Hendrick Motorsports, No. 24 Chevrolet
Selections remaining: 4
Comment: Hendrick Motorsports spends a lot of time out front in Vegas, winning 16 stages, the most by any team at a single track. Byron makes his way to the front here, leading laps in 11 of the last 12 events. The No. 24 team has six top-10 finishes in the last seven visits, including a dominant victory in 2023. 

DRIVERS TO AVOID

Driver: Carson Hocevar, Spire Motorsports, No. 77 Chevrolet
Selections remaining: 5
Comment: Hocevar displayed plenty of speed at Kansas before a restart ruckus tumbled his day to a 33rd-place finish. His Las Vegas numbers aren’t ideal, with a best finish of 15th in six starts, posting an average finish of 26.3, nearly five positions worse than the next-closest Chase drivers, Bubba Wallace and Ty Gibbs (21.8).

Driver: Chase Elliott, Hendrick Motorsports, No. 9 Chevrolet
Selections remaining: 5
Comment: Despite Hendrick Motorsports having a handle outside the Neon Garage, the results have been abysmal for Elliott in recent years. Sure, the No. 9 team had a strong runner-up result in March, but that finish is the outlier. In eight Next Gen starts, he has four finishes of 18th or worse.  

SLEEPERS OF THE WEEK

Driver: Austin Cindric, Team Penske, No. 2 Ford
Selections remaining: 4
Comment: Cindric arguably had the drive of his Cup career at Kansas, ending with a 3.39 average running position, his best in 181 Cup starts. His Las Vegas numbers don’t exactly light up the page with a pair of top 10s in nine starts, but they are drastically better than his Kansas record.  

Driver: Daniel Suárez, Spire Motorsports, No. 7 Chevrolet
Selections remaining: 5
Comment: With podium finishes in two of the last four Vegas races, Suárez is an interesting choice this weekend. His 168 laps led in Sin City are his most at any Cup track. He also has a pair of top-10 finishes in the last four races at mile-and-a-halves, including a crown jewel victory in the Coca-Cola 600.  

FEATURED MATCHUPS

Ty Gibbs vs. Carson Hocevar
Pick: Gibbs
Comment: Both drivers might have better luck on the Vegas strip than they have had at the 1.5-mile layout. Until Kansas, Toyota had been the dominant manufacturer at intermediates this season, so Gibbs is the play, as he rounded out the top five in the spring. 

William Byron vs. Chase Elliott
Pick: Byron
Comment: With three consecutive top 10s, the No. 24 team has shown glimpses of its normal self. Byron has banked top 10s in all six 1.5-mile races in 2026.  

Kyle Larson vs. Denny Hamlin
Pick: Hamlin
Comment: This might be the matchup of the year. Larson is white-hot at the right time, averaging 59.3 points per race and a 2.25 average finish through the first four Chase races. Las Vegas is among Larson’s best tracks, and the same is true for Hamlin. Pressure is mounting on the No. 11 team to keep up with Larson, so look for Hamlin to have a clutch performance. 

Chase Briscoe vs. Austin Cindric
Pick: Briscoe
Comment: Don’t overlook Cindric this weekend, as the No. 2 team has steadily improved at intermediate tracks. But Briscoe is in borderline must-start territory this weekend, collecting eight top-five finishes in the last 12 races at 1.5-mile tracks, including a checkered flag in the Windy City.  

MY LINEUP

Starting five: Denny Hamlin, Kyle Larson, William Byron, Chase Briscoe, Christopher Bell.
Garage: Tyler Reddick.  

36 FOR 36

Pick: William Byron, Hendrick Motorsports, No. 24 Chevrolet
Comment: Byron has finished inside the top 10 in all six attempts in 2026 and leads the Cup Series with a 9.2 average finish at 1.5-mile tracks since the introduction of the Next Gen car in 2022. Had he not rammed into the rear of a pitting Ty Dillon in the closing laps last year, he would enter this weekend with seven consecutive top-10 finishes at Las Vegas, and likely four straight top-five finishes.  

In the other three events, teams have had to rely on something entirely different to set the starting grid: the metric.

That term has been used a lot lately because it’s been needed so prevalently, thanks to inclement weather that washed out practice and qualifying at Darlington Raceway, Bristol Motor Speedway and Kansas Speedway. And while the metric is just an equation to factor recent performance into determining the starting lineup, that metric has played an obvious role in how teams begin a race that featured no previous on-track time.

Simply put, the performance metric weighs two factors: 70% of previous race finish and 30% current position in owners points. Regardless of weather, this metric is used every week to determine the qualifying order for an upcoming race. The lower the metric, the better — and the later that driver will go out in qualifying.

MORE: Las Vegas schedule | Chase standings

There are two caveats to the metric, though. The first is seen in qualifying order itself. As stated in the NASCAR Rule Book in Section 7.3.REV A: “In each Chase Event, all vehicles and drivers that are eligible for the Championship, will be assigned the final Qualifying Order positions.” In layman’s terms, this means the 16 drivers competing in The Chase will be the final 16 drivers out for qualifying. The second caveat is that if qualifying is indeed rained out, that added benefit for The Chase racers is also washed away. Instead, those championship-eligible teams are slotted wherever the metric says they should.

As the math would indicate, that places significant added value on how a driver finishes the week prior. That particularly came into play when the lineup was determined for the Cook Out Southern 500 at Darlington, a race that followed the chaotic finish of the regular-season finale at Daytona International Speedway. As a result, 37.5% of The Chase field started 20th or worse at Darlington: William Byron (20th), Ryan Blaney (24th), Kyle Larson (25th), Ty Gibbs (28th), Carson Hocevar (34th) and Chris Buescher (35th). The uphill climb toward earning critical stage points becomes a much tougher task when starting that far behind. And yet, even at a track as rough and narrow as Darlington, three of those six drivers clawed their way into the top 10 to earn Stage 1 points: Blaney (fifth), Byron (ninth) and Gibbs (10th).

A similar situation occurred at Bristol, one week after a messy race at World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway left many contenders with poor finishes. So when the green flag waved at Bristol, another six drivers started 20th or worse: Tyler Reddick (20th), Buescher (23rd), Chase Briscoe (26th), Chase Elliott (27th), Daniel Suárez (28th) and Blaney (29th). This time, only one of those Chasers charged toward points in Stage 1: Blaney, who finished the stage sixth.

Blaney was bitten by the metric again at Kansas thanks in part to a late-race crash at Bristol with Carson Hocevar. (Perhaps you heard about it.) The No. 12 Team Penske Ford started 25th at Kansas, and again Blaney nabbed a single stage point in 10th place when the green-checkered flag waved.

And as you might imagine, there have been some mixed emotions surrounding the metric.

“I got done saying last week, ‘Oh, the metric is what it is.’ And now I’m starting to slowly hate it like you all for what’s been happening to us,” Blaney said ahead of last week’s race at Kansas. “I thought we did a great job (at Bristol) dealing with starting in the back. I think we got to 20th after starting 29th before the (competition) yellow, and then did a good call to stay out. I thought our car was good enough to establish track position and then play around with it during that second yellow in the first stage to get some stage points, and then flip and stay out, and we were able to win the second one, so I thought we handled that really, really well.

“You never know how each week is gonna go. No matter where you qualify, you have to adjust to it and then kind of audible as the race goes on and cautions fall, but it is tough. I mean, pit-stall selection is also brutal when you don’t get to pick it or you pick towards the end, especially at these places or tracks where (calls to take) two tires are really big. Getting wedged in between a couple guys that you’re gonna be racing around all day is always tough, but I feel like we’ve done a good job at what we’ve been given.”

His teammate Joey Logano has seen both sides of the metric — starting 13th at Darlington but then starting second at Bristol and on pole at Kansas.

“I mean, it’s played a fair amount because it’s been a few races where it’s been obviously an effect,” Logano said of the metric in a Wednesday teleconference. “Obviously last week (at Kansas), we were on the right side of it; Darlington, we weren’t. So it just kind of comes out in the wash most of the time, but it still rewards performance. It rewards running well. It rewards the points and those type of things. I personally don’t have a huge issue with it. I mean, tell me a better way and maybe I’ll change my opinion, but it seems to be OK. Maybe we can tweak it some, sure, but it’s definitely played an effect some, for sure.”

Ultimately, the metric has become a topic of conversation in the NASCAR world because of an uncharacteristic stretch of unfortunate weather scenarios in three of the first four weeks of the postseason. But with such high stakes in determining the next Cup Series champion through this 10-race stretch, a system that heavily values recent on-track performance appears the most fair way to solve a circumstantial qualifying problem.

Thankfully, the days of determining qualifying order by a literal random draw are in the past, as are the times that rained-out qualifying sessions meant lining the starting grid by season-long owners points. Performance and results matter. And when Mother Nature interrupts with a washed-out time-trial session, at least the metric relies on what drivers have done lately than any random method.

After a new rules package debuted for the regular-season finale in August at Daytona International Speedway, the rear spoiler has been shortened to a height of 3.5 inches for the YellaWood 500, which marks the eighth of 10 races in The Chase presented by Mobil 1.

RELATED: Cup Series schedule | Chase standings

The adjustment reduces the spoiler size by an additional half-inch from changes made ahead of the Aug. 29 event at Daytona, in which the original 7-inch spoiler was reduced to 4 inches. That move, made in conjunction with a reduction in horsepower, was done to provide drivers more maneuverability in the pack-racing style of action that remains a signature of NASCAR’s superspeedway racing.

“It seemed like it was a win at Daytona,” Jamie McMurray, analyst and 2010 Daytona 500 champion, said on NASCAR Inside the Race. “All the drivers thought they could build a bigger run at Daytona than they had in the past. I applaud NASCAR for taking a little bit more off, taking that next step. The other thing to consider is that Talladega is about eight feet wider than Daytona, so this gives you a little more options if you can generate a run to be able to make a pass. So my anticipation is fairly high for seeing how this works out.”

Additionally, NASCAR has adjusted its stage lengths for the Talladega event to match the spring race, with the conclusion of Stage 1 set at Lap 98, Stage 2 at Lap 143 (a 45-lap segment) and the checkered flag scheduled for Lap 188 (45 laps), barring overtime. Original stage lengths were set at 60-120-188.

The intended goal of shortening the lattermost stages is to reduce the incentive for race teams to conserve fuel and instead incentivize a full-throttle race to the checkered flag.

MORE: Buy Talladega tickets

“We haven’t had stage points in a Chase format, and as we’ve seen this year, the stage points make a huge difference,” McMurray said. “You can have an average finish at the end if you’re able to capitalize on those stage points, and the fact that these guys are going to have to all go out and race to the end of all these stages and get as many points as they can, it’s going to be fun to watch.

“I’m sure that the teams will find a loophole in this somewhere, but as we talked about before, anytime you go with a rules change, it’s always fun to watch who can figure out the next little trick.”

“Back to what?” he said. “Back to 2021? No. Back to 2023? No.”

“But we‘ve been definitely building to get back to Victory Lane. I don‘t know if we‘re quite yet to where we can go dominate like we have in the past, but a day like today definitely gives you confidence.”

Larson was just coming off a 51-race winless streak before driving to Victory Lane in St. Louis, which was itself not among his most dominant career wins; with a Driver Rating of 129.5, it was his 10th-least dominant victory out of 34 in his career. (To wit: Joey Logano had the higher rating on the day despite Larson winning.) So he could be forgiven for still thinking the No. 5 team was in the process of rebuilding its form.

Now, though? It‘s impossible to deny that Larson is back to dominating races the way he did at his peak.

Following a second-place finish behind Logano at the Bristol Night Race, Larson rattled off a ridiculously dominant drive at Kansas to secure his second win in three races. He set a new track record (at any level) with 235 laps led, plus swept the stages and the fastest-lap bonus to tally a 76-point day, the maximum possible under the current scoring system. Larson‘s 88% share of laps led was the 13th-highest by a winning driver in the loop-data era (since 2005), and the fifth-highest at an intermediate track in that span:

The only time Larson was challenged was when Chase Briscoe passed him for the lead on Lap 238 and led each of the next 23 times around the track. But Larson stayed close to the bumper of the No. 19 car and, with seven laps remaining in the race, re-took the lead for good.

We mention Larson‘s brush with second place to illustrate the fact that, in NASCAR, there is no such thing as true perfection. Only three modern-era races have ever seen a winning driver lead 100% of all possible laps — Jeff Burton at New Hampshire in 2000, Cale Yarborough at the Nashville Fairgrounds in 1978 and Yarborough at Bristol in 1973. Of those, only Burton‘s came in the past 48 years, and only Yarborough at Bristol was truly wire-to-wire, starting on pole as well.

But there are degrees of perfection to be had, regardless. The Driver Rating formula — which grades drivers on a combination of finishing position, average running position and average speed, with bonuses for things like winning, leading laps and running up front — is capped at the top with a mark of 150.0 deemed to be the “perfect” performance. (This is our NASCAR version of the fabled 158.3 QB rating in football.) And Larson pitched one of those perfect games on Sunday, recording a nice, round 150.0 in the rating column at Kansas.

Again going back to 2005, that was just the 30th perfect 150.0 race recorded anywhere, the fifth of the Next Gen era (since 2022), and the first since Briscoe at Darlington more than a year ago.

As we‘ve noted before, Larson is the active king of the perfect (or near-perfect) drive. He owns four of the past six perfect-rated days to happen in the Cup Series, dating back to the 150.0 he notched at Texas during the 2021 playoffs. He‘s also had them at Homestead-Miami (2022), the Charlotte Roval (2024) and, now, Kansas (2026).

He‘s also had a number of near-miss brushes with perfection — six races with a rating greater than 149.0 but less than 150.0 (yes, somehow those fractions of a point shy of perfection are meaningful):

• 5/30/2021: Charlotte (149.5)
• 6/6/2021: Sonoma (149.2)
• 6/20/2021: Nashville (149.7)
• 9/21/2024: Bristol (149.7)
• 4/13/2025: Bristol (149.6)
• 5/11/2025: Kansas (149.7)

In that piece from May 2025, we concluded that no current-day driver was more liable to explode for such a dominant showing in any given race than Larson. But that hadn‘t necessarily been as true in 2026 until recently. During the regular season, Larson had just three races rated 120.0 or higher — Bristol (137.1), San Diego (124.2) and Kansas (122.5) — and saw none crack 140.0, much less challenge for a 150.0. By comparison, rival Denny Hamlin had seven races grade out at or above 120.0, four at or above 130.0 and one at or above 140.0 for good measure. 

While he still ranked fourth in average Driver Rating (trailing only Hamlin, Ryan Blaney and Tyler Reddick), we noted that Larson‘s consistency — i.e., his ability to avoid poorly rated days — was becoming as much or more of an asset than his high-ceiling performances.

When the high ceilings are back, though, look out. With an average rating of 123.7 through the first four races of The Chase, none lower than a 106.3, Larson is off to one of the hottest four-race starts of any Playoff/Chase driver since 2005:

Those types of early runs don‘t always guarantee a championship, of course. For every Jimmie Johnson in 2009, there was a Denny Hamlin in 2021, Matt Kenseth in 2013 or Juan Pablo Montoya in 2009. But Larson‘s barrage has coincided with less dominant runs and/or finishes from some of the leading counter-candidates for the 2026 crown. (Hamlin has seen his average rating fall from 100.6 in the regular season to 98.9 in The Chase, while Blaney has an average finish of 19.3 since The Chase began.)

As a result, Larson has gone from being in a dead-heat with Hamlin at the top of my Chase forecast odds to being the clear favorite at 57%, versus 29% for Denny and 10% for Christopher Bell. In other words, The Chase is suddenly Larson‘s to lose — and while under the old system, we still might not have seen him race for the championship, his recent dominance in the current one may make him awfully hard to catch.

Seven team members were punished for two separate fights Saturday. The first incident took place after a heat race and resulted in fines and probation for four competitors in the NASCAR Regional series.

RELATED: Heim involved in altercation at Martinsville hot dog stand | Multiple penalties issued after Heim fight

The heaviest punishments went to three team members for an attack on Brickyard 400 winner Corey Heim in the pits after Saturday night‘s main event.

Team owner Chad Bryant was fined $2,000 and suspended indefinitely. Chad Bryant Racing team members Steven Civatarese ($1,000 fine, indefinite suspension) and Ryden Lapcevich ($500, probation through 2027) also were penalized.

On the latest episode of the “Hauler Talk” podcast, NASCAR vice president of racing communications Mike Forde said the identities of all the perpetrators were finalized Monday night after the lengthy review of an event that featured nearly 90 drivers entered and at least a few hundred team members.

“There’s no facial recognition software at Martinsville Speedway, so it took a little bit of time to find out,” Forde said. “We had to hunt down the IDs of a couple people during the heat race so we were able to get everyone accounted for, and it boils down to very simply what we’ve said. When a crew member gets involved and puts his or her hands on a driver, that is unacceptable, and we are going to react in kind.

“We took it seriously. I hope that’s a message to those up and down the NASCAR ranks, whether it is a local racing series event or a NASCAR Cup Series event. When crew members get involved with putting their hands on the drivers, we‘re going to react in a fashion that you probably don’t want to dip your toe into those waters.”

After taking the checkered flag in second, Heim collided with Chad Bryant Racing driver Treyten Lapcevich in a Turn 1 crash that precipitated the fight.

“We reviewed that,” Forde said of the post-race collision between Heim and Lapcevich. “I believe we had everyone into the hauler afterwards. We did review that (incident) and chose not to penalize and focused more on the fight and the crew members.”

MORE: Las Vegas weekend schedule

Other topics covered by Forde and senior director of racing communications Amanda Ellis during the 71st episode of “Hauler Talk,” which explores competition issues in NASCAR:

— An interview with Carl Goodman, the managing director of powertrain at NASCAR, about how the post-race engine dyno process was handled after Kansas Speedway.

— The future of the metric formula used to set starting lineups in the event of qualifying being rained out.

Click on the embed below to listen or search for “Hauler Talk” wherever you download podcasts to hear it on your phone, tablet or mobile device.

Nate Ryan has written about NASCAR since 1996 while working at the San Bernardino Sun, Richmond Times-Dispatch, USA Today Co. and for the past 10 years at NBC Sports Digital. He is a contributor to the “Hauler Talk” show on the NASCAR Podcast Network. He has also covered various other motorsports, including the IndyCar and IMSA series.

After five years as a co-owner and driver for the RFK Racing team, Keselowski departs with the intent of continuing his storied racing career, adding in a Tuesday statement: “I‘m nowhere near ready to be done as a driver. I still have a lot I want to accomplish in this sport, and I‘m looking forward to what comes next.”

Therein lies the problem: What’s next?

MORE: Cup Series standings | Keselowski through the years

There is little to no room at the inn as the bulk of seats for the 2027 NASCAR Cup Series season are already occupied. Many of the most prominent vacancies have already been filled: Wood Brothers Racing welcomes Jesse Love in place of Josh Berry, who takes over the No. 42 Toyota at Legacy Motor Club. That move left John Hunter Nemechek without a 2027 ride, but RFK Racing‘s sudden opening could alter his outlook after the organization reaffirmed its commitment to fielding three Cup cars next season.

Keselowski is the type of driver a team would make space for: The 2012 Cup Series champion ranks 25th all-time with 36 Cup Series wins and sits fourth all-time with 39 NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series victories to pair with his 2010 O’Reilly title. But where can he realistically land?

An initial scope of the landscape says he may be forced into a sabbatical season, sidelined from full-time Cup competition. Speculation quickly spread to Kaulig Racing, which fields two full-time entries with current drivers AJ Allmendinger and Ty Dillon. Allmendinger and team CEO Chris Rice confirmed in June that Allmendinger’s contract with Kaulig runs through 2029 with options through 2032, securing Allmendinger’s status with Kaulig for years to come. Dillon’s status has not yet been confirmed for 2027, but industry sources believe driver changes are not expected at Kaulig for next season.

What makes Kaulig a fascinating topic of conversation for Keselowski speculation, however, is its obvious ties to Dodge and Ram. Kaulig is fielding five Ram trucks in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series in 2026 as parent company Stellantis returns to NASCAR‘s national-series ranks for the first time since 2012. In February, Stellantis’ North American Motorsports competition director Kevin Kidd affirmed: “We aim to get back in the Cup Series” with Dodge.

But in a Thursday interview on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, Rice said that he is not in talks with Keselowski: “I have not had any conversations with Brad Keselowski about driving a Dodge, even if Dodge comes back. Obviously, it’s super late, and you don’t hear me talking about it much, so that should tell you what’s happening.”

Keselowski becomes an interesting party in this conversation because of his past with the famed manufacturer. Keselowski won the 2012 NASCAR Cup Series championship driving a Dodge for Team Penske and stands as the manufacturer’s most recent winner in Cup Series competition. If no seats present themselves for Cup competition in 2027, would Keselowski be willing to spend a year fighting for a championship in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series with Kaulig’s Ram outfit? If so, Stellantis could rally around Keselowski as a potential face for its future return to Cup Series glory.

Alex Bowman re-signed with Hendrick Motorsports in July to return to the No. 48 Chevrolet for the 2027 season, which he plans to make his final full-time campaign. Current Trackhouse Racing driver Connor Zilisch is already signed to take over the No. 48 beginning in 2028. Austin Cindric has reiterated his preference not to disclose contract information but has indicated he will return to the No. 2 Team Penske Ford, Keselowski’s former ride, despite the team’s lack of a formal announcement. Ricky Stenhouse Jr. also signed a multiyear contract extension to remain the driver of the No. 47 Hyak Motorsports Chevrolet.

Austin Hill will become the full-time driver of the No. 33 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet, taking over the renumbered No. 8 car following the tragic passing of Kyle Busch in May. The team has also indicated a return for longtime driver Austin Dillon, pilot of the No. 3 Chevrolet his grandfather Childress owns.

Changes are also not expected at Spire Motorsports, where drivers Daniel Suárez and Michael McDowell appear likely to stay. Suárez joined the team ahead of the 2026 campaign on a one-year deal with “a path forward for multiple years,” Spire co-owner Jeff Dickerson said during Suárez’s introductory press conference. McDowell joined Spire on a multiyear contract beginning in 2025 and emphasized a “long-term” deal with time remaining during a May press conference at Watkins Glen International.

Cole Custer and the No. 41 Haas Factory Team Chevrolet appear unlikely to part ways despite a disappointing season for the 2023 NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series champion, entering Sunday’s race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway (5:30 p.m. ET, USA Network, HBO Max, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) 32nd in the points standings. The same can be said for Cody Ware, driver of the No. 51 Rick Ware Racing Chevrolet that his father owns.

That appears to leave Keselowski on the outside looking in for the 2027 Cup Series schedule unless something unforeseen opens another opportunity elsewhere. But until Tuesday, Keselowski’s departure from RFK Racing was unforeseen, too.

Hendrick Motorsports driver Kyle Larson currently has the firmest grip on the standings and more momentum than anybody in the sport, riding high after perhaps the most dominant performance of anyone this season. But his fellow title contender in Joe Gibbs Racing’s Denny Hamlin has the clear best 1.5-mile-track resume in the field — and two consecutive wins at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, site of Sunday’s South Point 400 (5:30 p.m. ET, USA Network, HBO Max, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).

Just 26 points separate them atop the Cup Series standings entering Race No. 5 of The Chase presented by Mobil 1. But will that deficit grow or shrink — or flip — on Sunday? It’s truly a heads-or-tails scenario between them, and it almost feels like a given they’ll finish 1-2 in some order.

RELATED: Kansas results | Cup Series standings

If the Kansas City stomping we saw out of the No. 5 Chevrolet on Sunday was Larson’s emphatic statement that he’s fully “back,” Las Vegas offers Hamlin a particularly inviting place to respond in grand fashion.

The defending and two-time champ turned a one-point lead over Hamlin entering Kansas into a 26-point advantage by taking literally everything available to him: both stages, the fastest-lap point and the race win for the first maximum 76-point day under the current scoring system. Every other Chase driver lost ground to him.

(He didn’t get a chance to win the pole with qualifying washed away, but we can probably guess how that would’ve gone.)

It continued a remarkable opening stretch for the 34-time Cup winner, as Larson has finished fifth, first, second and first through four Chase races, producing a 2.25 average finish — the best through the first four races of any postseason since The Chase debuted in 2004.

BY THE NUMBERS: Hamlin vs. Larson

And yet, if there is a driver-track combination capable of making that 26-point cushion look considerably smaller by Sunday night, Hamlin at Las Vegas makes a convincing case. Hamlin knows the opportunity is there for the taking.

“We just gotta, I mean, do what we’ve been doing in Las Vegas,” Hamlin said after Kansas Speedway. “That’s a track that, you know, I feel like I’ve got a great feel for, especially in the race, and so we’ll see how it all plays out.”

What Hamlin has been doing on NASCAR’s traditional 1.5-mile tracks extends well beyond Vegas, too. His finishes in the six such races this season echo the elite level Larson has started The Chase with: No. 11 has secured first, fourth, second, third, third and third at these intermediates.

Hamlin is the only driver to finish in the top five in all six, and his 2.67 average finish is tied with Jimmie Johnson in 2005 and Bobby Labonte in 1999 for the best ever through the first six 1.5-mile races of a season. He has also spent 83% of the laps run on those tracks inside the top five. He just lives there.

His eight-race streak of top-five finishes on 1.5-mile tracks, dating to Kansas last fall, is the longest active streak and matches Johnson’s 2004-05 run among some of the best such stretches in NASCAR history. Whether or not he winds up with the Bill France Cup in November, Hamlin has certainly put together a championship-capable season to this point.

Chase drivers at 1.5-mile tracks in 2026

The table really makes Hamlin’s consistency impossible to miss, while making Larson’s 13.8 average finish look almost bizarre beside his current form. Two 34th-place results, at Texas and Chicagoland, have punished Larson’s average considerably. Remove those clear outliers and his other four 1.5-mile finishes this season are seventh, second, fifth and first — probably a much more accurate picture of where he’s at on these tracks. Recent history would suggest so, anyway.

And while Hamlin owns the overwhelming edge in finishing consistency, Larson has actually led more laps on 1.5-mile tracks this year: 412 to Hamlin’s 393. Christopher Bell is a distant third among Chase drivers with 145 (but could be the one to break up the party this weekend, if anybody can).

That neatly captures the statistical tug-of-war between the championship’s top two. Hamlin has been remarkably steady from the jump. Larson and Co. have taken time to get there along the winding path of volatility — yet appear to be locked in at the moment — but when the No. 5 hits, it tends to hit hard. Kansas was the latest example. Hamlin finished third and still watched Larson take 25 points out of him in one afternoon.

Larson knows just how quickly the reverse could happen.

“I only have a 26, I think, point lead on Denny,” Larson said after Kansas. “That could be swallowed up in a hurry. I scored 76 points today. So, Denny could go have a max points day next week, and I could blow an engine, like Noah (Gragson) did in the first stage, and I’m down 70-some points right there.”

The overall 1.5-mile stats still favor Hamlin, but his best argument that such a swing is possible might simply be the venue.

He has won the last two Cup races at Las Vegas and can become only the second driver to win three straight there, joining Johnson, who accomplished the feat from 2005-07. This spring, Hamlin overcame a speeding penalty at the first stage break, took the lead on the final restart and won while scoring 70 points. Larson finished seventh.

But calling Las Vegas solely Hamlin’s race to lose would be ignoring the guy across the table from him.

Larson has three Cup wins at the track of his own, and his 881 laps led are already the most in Las Vegas history. His 8.9 average finish is also the best among drivers with more than four starts, and he has finished first or second in six of his 11 Vegas starts since joining Hendrick Motorsports.

In the Next Gen era alone, Larson has led 657 laps at Las Vegas — nearly three times Hamlin’s 232. So while Hamlin owns the broader 1.5-mile argument in 2026, Larson has more than enough Vegas-specific evidence to push back.

There is also reason to believe Kansas will not necessarily translate directly to Sunday.

Larson’s biggest advantage there came early in runs, when the No. 5 could create separation before Hamlin’s car began to come back to him. But Vegas presents a significantly more complicated challenge for drivers.

“It’s a lot different track,” Hamlin said. “You got to have something for the bumps, and so I feel like we struck a good balance of that over the years, and it’s taken many years to get us to that point, but hopefully we’ve still got the speed that we had there in the spring.”

The numbers, though, obviously suggest both drivers should have plenty of it.

MORE: Chase Report: Where we stand before Las Vegas

Larson enters Las Vegas with control of a Chase that has already spun itself around a handful of times with six-plus weeks to go. Hamlin arrives with the strongest 1.5-mile record in the field and back-to-back wins at the track.

A pair of aces in Sin City, 26 markers apart.

Time to show the cards.

MORE: Weekend schedule | How to watch NASCAR on TV

Cup Series
Single-car qualifying will occur at 5:35 p.m. ET on Saturday (truTV).

POSITION	NUMBER	DRIVER	METRIC
1	51	Cody Ware	34.900
2	4	Noah Gragson	34.800
3	21	Josh Berry	32.300
4	47	Ricky Stenhouse Jr.	31.100
5	41	Cole Custer	30.900
6	88	Connor Zilisch #	30.800
7	38	Zane Smith	30.100
8	10	Ty Dillon	29.800
9	33	Austin Hill(i)	27.500
10	35	Riley Herbst	26.500
11	71	Michael McDowell	24.900
12	16	AJ Allmendinger	22.300
13	3	Austin Dillon	22.200
14	97	Shane van Gisbergen	21.900
15	34	Todd Gilliland	19.900
16	48	Alex Bowman	19.800
17	43	Erik Jones	17.500
18	42	John Hunter Nemechek	17.200
19	1	Ross Chastain	16.200
20	6	Brad Keselowski	13.800
21	77	Carson Hocevar (C)	26.400
22	17	Chris Buescher (C)	20.600
23	22	Joey Logano (C)	15.200
24	7	Daniel Suárez (C)	14.600
25	54	Ty Gibbs (C)	13.700
26	60	Ryan Preece (C)	11.200
27	45	Tyler Reddick (C)	9.800
28	9	Chase Elliott (C)	9.500
29	23	Bubba Wallace (C)	9.000
30	24	William Byron (C)	8.500
31	19	Chase Briscoe (C)	5.200
32	20	Christopher Bell (C)	5.100
33	12	Ryan Blaney (C)	5.000
34	2	Austin Cindric (C)	4.400
35	11	Denny Hamlin (C)	2.700
36	5	Kyle Larson (C)	1.000

O’Reilly Auto Parts Series
Single-car qualifying will occur at 3:05 p.m. ET on Saturday (ESPN Unlimited).

POSITION	NUMBER	DRIVER	METRIC
1	47	Dawson Cram	37.300
2	55	Joey Gase	35.300
3	45	Lavar Scott #	34.800
4	31	Blaine Perkins	31.600
5	53	Blake Lothian	30.800
6	07	Josh Bilicki	30.700
7	0	Garrett Smithley	30.600
8	02	Ryan Ellis	29.100
9	92	Josh Williams	28.900
10	96	Anthony Alfredo	27.500
11	48	Patrick Staropoli #	26.600
12	39	Ryan Sieg	25.800
13	27	Jeb Burton	24.700
14	91	Mason Maggio	22.800
15	28	Kyle Sieg	22.700
16	42	Matt DiBenedetto	22.500
17	32	Andrew Patterson	19.300
18	87	Lee Pulliam	18.100
19	51	Jeremy Clements	16.100
20	24	Harrison Burton	15.000
21	44	Brennan Poole	14.500
22	26	Dean Thompson	12.000
23	18	William Sawalich	5.600
24	88	Rajah Caruth (C)	19.400
25	21	Austin Hill (C)	18.100
26	1	Carson Kvapil (C)	17.700
27	20	Brandon Jones (C)	13.500
28	2	Jesse Love (C)	13.100
29	8	Sammy Smith (C)	9.400
30	99	Parker Retzlaff (C)	9.200
31	54	Taylor Gray (C)	8.100
32	41	Sam Mayer (C)	6.700
33	17	Corey Day (C)	5.600
34	19	Brent Crews # (C)	3.600
35	7	Justin Allgaier (C)	3.400
36	00	Sheldon Creed (C)	1.000

* Required to qualify on time
# denotes series rookie
(i) denotes ineligible for driver points
(C) denotes Chase participant in either the owner or driver championship