With three regular-season races remaining in the 2026 NASCAR Cup Series season, it's time for a check-in to see how the race for The Chase is progressing.
Reminder: The top 16 drivers in points make The Chase. There is no more win-and-in. The regular-season points leader starts The Chase with 2,100 points and second place starts with 2,075. Third place starts with 2,065 points, then drivers are separated by five-point increments through 16th place.
RELATED: Cup Series standings | Richmond weekend schedule
The Race for No. 1
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Somehow,
Denny Hamlin and the No. 11 team persevered through an entire weekend
plagued by brake issues to score a top-five finish and expand his points lead by an additional 19 points. What's most notable, though, is who now sits behind him.
Ty Gibbs vaulted two spots in the standings into second place, 103 points behind his Joe Gibbs Racing teammate after an impressive surge
to win Sunday's Iowa Corn 350 at Iowa Speedway. Gibbs has ranked inside the top five in points since May, so this is no fluke from the No. 54 team. But with 10 top fives and 15 top 10s banked through 23 races, Gibbs has established himself both as a weekly contender and a
true threat to win the championship.
Ryan Blaney left Iowa where he started in third place in the standings, knocking off an additional 10 points of his deficit to Hamlin's lead. But this day could have had an even more dramatic points swing in Blaney's favor. The 2024 Iowa winner started from pole position and won Stage 1 before finishing eighth in Stage 2. Blaney worked his way back to second place but ultimately slid to a
third-place finish instead of scoring a third win of 2026.
With three races remaining, Hamlin hasn't quite locked up the No. 1 seed in The Chase, but a triple-digit lead exiting Iowa leaves him inching closer to clinching with two great tracks ahead of him at Richmond Raceway and New Hampshire Motor Speedway.
The Mythical Top Six
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Two names in this section jump out immediately, for very different reasons:
Tyler Reddick and
Christopher Bell.
Reddick, once the points leader by nearly 130 markers, has endured a summer of suffering that has seemingly tanked his hopes of claiming the No. 1 seed with The Chase quickly approaching.
A Lap 4 crash inside the top 10 smashed Reddick's car into the wall at Iowa and left him 36th -- last on the leaderboard -- resulting in his fifth finish of 30th or worse in the last nine races. Reddick had five wins, nine top fives and 11 top 10s in the 14 races before that span. Heading to Richmond, Reddick sank two spots in the standings to his lowest points rank of 2026.
On the other end of the momentum spectrum, Bell and the No. 20 Joe Gibbs Racing team are striking while the iron is hot. While Bell is still seeking his first win of the season, his
second-place effort at Iowa launched him four spots forward in the points hunt, landing him just four points shy of fellow JGR teammate
Chase Briscoe in fifth. Bell's seventh runner-up finish of the season underscores an incredible stretch for the No. 20 team, finishing second in four of the last five Cup races.
Chase Elliott salvaged a 15th-place finish out of Iowa to minimize the points damage after incurring some literal damage in Saturday's practice session. Elliott backed the car
into the Turn 1 wall on Saturday before qualifying 32nd and was one lap down at the conclusion of Stage 1, but the No. 9 Hendrick Motorsports team rallied and lost just one spot in the standings instead. Spire Motorsports'
Carson Hocevar was dealt the most notable dip in the standings, however, dropping three spots and outside the top five after both a
mechanical issue and a mid-race spin at Iowa.
The Middle Ground
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This is where the action really begins to heat up. These six drivers are separated by just 72 points with three races remaining, with more movement extremely likely before The Chase arrives in September.
Chris Buescher managed to maintain his ninth spot in the points rundown with an impressive 13th-place finish at Iowa, aided in part by a
risky strategy call by crew chief Scott Graves that left the No. 17 RFK Racing Ford on track for the final 137 laps of Sunday's race, crossing the finish line on fumes after a dismal start.
Kyle Larson still can't catch a break, on the other hand, as the No. 5 Hendrick team finished 33rd or worse for the fourth time in five weeks, this time thanks to a
crash with teammate Alex Bowman that bent Larson's right-rear toe link. Larson ultimately finished 33rd, 18 laps down, and fell two spots to the brink of the top 10. His Chase hopes seem unquestioned, but the defending series champion is in danger of a poor seed to begin his title defense in earnest.
A good-not-great day for
William Byron and a disappointing performance for
Daniel Suárez led to a position swap between the two after Iowa as Byron crept closer back to the top 10. Byron's ninth-place finish marked the first top 10 for Hendrick Motorsports after an uncharacteristic three-race dry spell, leaving Byron with a triple-digit cushion above the cutline entering Richmond.
Three-time champion
Joey Logano bolstered his postseason hopes with two second-place stage finishes before ultimately settling for 14th at Iowa, carrying an 89-point advantage out of the heartland despite a late pit-road miscue.
Bubba Wallace may not be entirely comfortable sitting 68 points to the good with three races left, particularly without many past stats to lean on at either Richmond (one top five in 14 starts) or New Hampshire (one top five, two top 10s in eight starts), but the Toyotas still have speed.
The Cutline Battle
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Now that's what I call a points battle.
Just 68 points divide these six drivers fighting for the final two spots in The Chase. Sixteen drivers will fight for a championship while everyone else will have to claw for 17th.
Shane van Gisbergen is the best of this bunch right now, but the New Zealand native will be tested again over the next two weeks. His short-track prowess took an obvious step forward at North Wilkesboro Speedway, where he led laps, earned stage points in each stage and finished fifth, but Iowa proved difficult again with a
30th-place finish. The good news is that he finished 14th at Richmond last summer and was running inside the top 10 for much of last year's New Hampshire race before getting turned midway through.
The man at the cutline had a miserable experience at Iowa, though.
Austin Cindric mustered through an afternoon with no brakes and plenty of frustration to finish 29th, two laps down, in his No. 2 Team Penske Ford as his margin above 17th-place
Ryan Preece shrank by nine points Sunday afternoon. Preece had high hopes for his No. 60 RFK Racing team but qualified 35th and was lapped early before eventually scrapping his way to 20th at the checkered flag.
Perhaps the biggest surprise of this bunch, however, was
Ross Chastain, who has suddenly entered the conversation from seemingly nowhere. The No. 1 Trackhouse Racing Chevrolet was quick all weekend, from practice through the race, allowing Chastain to qualify inside the top 10, net stage points in each segment and ultimately finish seventh after leading 40 laps. That rocketed the 2022 championship runner-up three spots forward, placing Chastain firmly in the battle for the coveted 16th spot in the postseason.
What could have been excellent days for
Brad Keselowski and
Erik Jones proved dismal instead. Keselowski had posted the fourth-quickest time in qualifying but
crashed entering Turn 1 on his second lap, plummeting the No. 6 Ford to the rear as his team repaired the damage to his primary car, eventually taking the checkered flag 27th, two laps down. Jones entered Iowa 18th, 44 points behind Cindric, but appeared to have one of the fastest cars of the weekend after turning the quickest lap in practice. But Reddick's error in Turn 1 also
wiped out Jones' No. 43 Legacy Motor Club Toyota, sinking Jones two spots in the standings and eliminating any chance of chipping away at the deficit Sunday.
But within a 50-point radius entering Richmond, the fight is on for Jones and the rest of the top 20 with just a trio of races separating us from The Chase.