Chase superlatives: Champion pick, hottest hand, biggest wild-card driver, more

The regular season is complete, the points have been reset and the 16-driver field is set for NASCAR’s 10-race Chase, beginning Sunday with the Cook Out Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway (5 p.m. ET, USA Network, HBO Max, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).

Denny Hamlin starts atop the standings with 2,100 points, 25 ahead of Ryan Blaney and 35 clear of Tyler Reddick. Ryan Preece brings up the rear of the field, 100 points off Hamlin’s lead before a lap of The Chase presented by Mobil 1 has been turned.

From Darlington to the Nov. 8 finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway sits a championship gauntlet of intermediates, short tracks, Talladega and plenty of opportunity for the order to reshuffle.

With some help from Racing Insights, here are 12 superlatives and predictions for how The Chase, in its triumphant return, could unfold.

Most likely quick starter: Chase Briscoe

For Briscoe, The Chase could hardly open at a better place.

The No. 19 driver has won the past two Southern 500s, and last year's was a proper drubbing: 309 laps led, the most by a Darlington winner since Dale Earnhardt led 335 in April 1986. A third consecutive Southern 500 victory would leave only Jeff Gordon with a longer streak in the event.

Briscoe also starts as the fifth seed, just 45 points behind Hamlin, after climbing from 33rd in the standings following Phoenix in March.

It's a tall task, but it legitimately feels quite possible.

Honorable mention: Ty Gibbs. No. 4 seed Gibbs scored the third-most points among Chase drivers at the eight Chase tracks already visited in 2026 and ranks fourth in Racing Insights’ full-Chase projection. He's taken a huge leap this year and could make a statement by coming out of the gates hot.

Most favorable Chase schedule: Denny Hamlin

Yes, Hamlin once again has the clearest path to a championship -- it's just a matter of what he does with it.

Eight of the 10 Chase tracks have already hosted a Cup race this season, and Hamlin scored a field-best 374 points across those events. Racing Insights’ comparable-track projection puts him at 461 points over the full Chase — a whopping 86 more than the next-highest total.

Perhaps most ominously for everybody else, Hamlin has been the leading points scorer at the track types comprising five of the first six Chase races, and he already enters with a points buffer.

The schedule will eventually throw Talladega into the blender, and anything goes there.

But Hamlin's advantage is how favorable everything looks before and after it.

Honorable mention: Chase Elliott. Ignore his recent form for a moment, and the track mix remains enticing. Racing Insights projects Elliott for 329 Chase points, fifth-most in the field, highlighted by particularly strong Martinsville-type performance, which could be the crux of a potential championship run.

Most likely non-Chase spoiler: Corey Heim

The obvious qualifier is that Heim will not be in the field every week.

The equally obvious counterpoint: he apparently does not need to be in order to make an impact.

Heim has made nine Cup starts this season and won twice, both within his past four appearances and in two massive races, at Naval Base Coronado and Indianapolis. The latter made him the first driver since AJ Foyt in 1965 to win twice within his first 15 career Cup starts, and Indy is a crown-jewel race his decades-long-veteran boss still has yet to secure.

He opens The Chase by making his first Cup start at Darlington, where he arrives with consecutive Truck Series victories and a legitimate chance to cross off two crown jewels before he's even a full-timer.

The 16 Chase drivers have enough to worry about without somebody outside the championship taking trophies and stage points away from them.

Heim has already proven quite capable of doing exactly that.

Honorable mention: Brad Keselowski. His only RFK Racing victory came at Darlington in 2024, and he led 142 laps, swept both stages and finished second there this spring. The 2012 champ has finished inside the top 15 in seven of his past eight Darlington starts.

Biggest 2027 audition: Josh Berry

Missing The Chase eliminated Berry from one job over these final 10 races.

It might make the other one more important.

Berry will not return to Wood Brothers Racing in 2027, meaning the closing stretch becomes a showcase for wherever his career takes him next, Cup or otherwise. Conveniently, he enters it driving better than he has all season.

Berry has five consecutive top-10 finishes, the longest active streak in the Cup Series, and all five are his best finishes of 2026. His 6.2 average finish during the stretch is best among all drivers, while the Wood Brothers as an organization had not produced five straight top 10s since Morgan Shepherd in 1994.

Five straight top 10s don't happen by accident, and you can rest assured that potential employers have also noticed. Will he keep it up over the next 10 weeks, though?

Honorable mention: John Hunter Nemechek. Legacy Motor Club confirmed this week that Nemechek will not return to the No. 42 Toyota in 2027, turning his final 10 races into an audition of his own. After a career-best 2025, Nemechek has just one top five and two top 10s this season. A strong closing stretch would be a timely reminder of the form that helped reestablish him as a full-time Cup driver.

Hottest hand: Joey Logano

Eight races ago, Logano was 20th in points.

Now he is the No. 9 seed and once again lurking at precisely the time of year when nobody particularly wants the three-time champ lurking.

The prolific winner scored more points than any driver over the final seven regular-season races and led 420 laps over the final six after leading just 116 in the first 20.

Racing Insights' broader Chase projection is considerably less bullish, particularly on the intermediate tracks. Fair enough.

But the No. 22 team spent most of the summer turning numbers that looked concerning into numbers that now look dangerous, and he appears to only be picking up steam.

Honorable mention: Ryan Preece. Hard to arrive much hotter than racing your way into The Chase in the most memorable fashion with your first Cup victory. Preece gained 48 points to the cutline at Daytona after overcoming an early crash and now starts his championship run not quite with house money, because he expected to be here -- but perhaps the closest thing to it in the field.

Most under-the-radar contender: Daniel Suárez

Here is perhaps the quietest stat in The Chase:

No Chevrolet driver has a better average finish this season than Suárez at 14.69.

Read that again.

The veteran in first-year Spire Motorsports has a win, three top fives and seven top 10s, enters 11th in points and heads to Darlington fresh off a runner-up finish at Daytona -- his best result since winning at Charlotte.

Nobody is mistaking him for the favorite.

A 10-race championship where consistency matters, however, leaves plenty of room for the driver nobody is talking about to keep banking finishes while everybody else potentially continues stepping on rakes.

Honorable mention: Austin Cindric. Again, the argument is not flash. It is 10 top-15 finishes in his past 12 races and a starting position low enough to make every clean afternoon matter. Racing for Penske in the postseason sure doesn't hurt, either.

Biggest wild-card driver: Kyle Larson

This one still barely computes.

Larson, the defending and two-time series champion, led 659 laps during the regular season, third-most in the Cup Series, and has nine top-five finishes.

He also has not won in 50 races and is sporting his worst average finish since his age-22 season in 2015.

That is his longest drought since joining Hendrick Motorsports in 2021, a remarkable dry spell for somebody who had essentially won once every six starts for the organization before the drought began.

The broader Hendrick downturn only muddies things further. The organization has just two wins this season after six through 26 races last year (which was still a bit off from its typical standard of excellence), and its laps-led total has been more than cut in half, from 2,345 to 1,152.

Could Larson win this championship? Of course.

Could he somehow get through all 10 races without winning one?

Apparently, that is a question we now have to ask.

If he turns it around, though -- look out.

Honorable mention: Carson Hocevar. Five top fives marked a major third-year breakthrough, but Hocevar fell from fifth to 12th in the regular-season standings over the final four races with three finishes of 31st or worse. Add a series-high 33 on-track incidents and the range of possible Chase outcomes is ... broad.

Most overdue breakthrough: Christopher Bell

Seven runner-up finishes. Zero wins.

That really is the whole category.

Bell’s seven second-place results tie Harry Gant’s 1981 total for the most in a winless Cup season. Across his past 58 races, Bell has finished second 11 times -- nearly than twice as often as all but one other driver.

And these are not fluky near-misses from a driver punching above his weight. Bell is an annual title contender and has led 559 laps, fourth-most in the series, and NASCAR Insights ranks him fourth in season-long speed.

There isn't another gear for Bell to even find, he literally just needs one of these Sundays to finally finish one position better, and it's hard to see that not happening.

Honorable mention: Chris Buescher. Buescher enters the Chase on a 70-race winless streak despite 10 top 10s and a 14.9 average finish this season. Eventually, “solidly in the mix” needs to turn back into Victory Lane.

Most likely points climber: William Byron

Thirteenth seed is an awfully strange place to find William Byron, who entered 2026 atop our preseason rankings.

His 2026 has been equally strange.

Byron enters The Chase 85 points behind Hamlin and still searching for his first victory after winning three times last season. Yet Racing Insights projects 318 Chase points based on comparable-track performance, eighth-most among the 16 contenders and considerably stronger than his starting position suggests.

There is also help underneath him: the No. 24 pit crew ranks second in the series.

Nothing about Byron’s regular season suggested championship form, at least this year. But nothing about his track record suggests 13th is where he belongs, either, and he should be looked at as a sleeping giant that is very much not out of this thing yet.

Honorable mention: Austin Cindric. The No. 2 driver starts 15th but, again, has quietly finished inside the top 15 in 10 of the past 12 races. In a cumulative championship, boring will likely become beautiful pretty quickly.

Most pressure to deliver: Hendrick Motorsports

This one is bigger than any single driver.

The defending championship organization enters The Chase with Larson, Elliott and Byron all in the field (with Bowman looking to build some momentum after missing time and before his final full-time season) — and almost none of the sustained four-car dominance normally associated with Hendrick Motorsports.

Through 26 races last season: six wins, 33 top fives, 56 top 10s and 2,345 laps led.

This year: two wins, 22 top fives, 39 top 10s and 1,152 laps led.

Larson and Byron are winless. Elliott owns the organization’s only two victories and has only one top 10 across his past 12 races.

Hendrick has spent most of the summer searching for something to click, but, unfortunately, there are no more races left to tinker. Results are needed ASAP.

Honorable mention: Bubba Wallace. Wallace starts 14th, 90 points behind Hamlin, while teammate Reddick opens third and 23XI Racing has already won seven times this year. There is ample evidence within his own walls of what championship-level performance can look like, and all the pieces are there for him to deliver.

Most likely first-time champion other than the obvious one: Tyler Reddick

There are two Tyler Reddick seasons to reconcile.

The first 14 races produced five wins, nine top fives, 11 top 10s and a 5.57 average finish. The final 12 produced zero wins, two top fives and a mystifying 20.0 average finish.

And yet here he is, third in The Chase and statistically positioned for something much closer to the first version than the second.

Reddick scored 351 points at the eight Chase tracks already raced this season, trailing only Hamlin, and Racing Insights’ comparable-track model projects 375 points for the No. 45 across the Chase -- again, second only to Hamlin.

The summer raised legitimate questions, but five wins already provided a pretty convincing answer about his ceiling, and he's still likely pretty far from hitting it.

Honorable mention: Christopher Bell. Bell remains somehow winless despite 11 top fives, 559 laps led and seven runner-up finishes. The title would be his first; the underlying speed required to win it is already there.

Champion pick: Denny Hamlin

And here's the obvious one.

The case against Hamlin at this point is mostly historical.

The case for him? Just about everything else.

The No. 11 driver's 8.23 average finish is easily the best in the Cup Series, he led the field with 880 laps out front during the regular season and has finished inside the top 10 in 14 consecutive non-drafting oval races. The future Hall of Famer enters his 20th postseason still searching for the championship that has eluded him, with runner-up finishes in 2010 and 2025 representing his closest calls.

Every driver will likely have at least one or two bad days in a 10-race championship. Perhaps the best argument for Hamlin, however, is that nobody has been better at preventing one from turning into three. He's as dialed in as ever, and this thing is his to lose.

Honorable mention: Ryan Blaney. The 2023 champion starts just 25 points back, ranked second in laps led and scored more stage points than anyone during the regular season. If Hamlin gives anything away, Blaney is positioned to collect it.