The Chase Report presented by Mobil 1: Where we stand after Gateway

The second race of The Chase presented by Mobil 1 produced another first-time winner this season as Kyle Larson broke a 51-race winless drought to score the victory on Sunday at World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway. The chaos behind him, however, left The Chase field shaken.

Here’s where we stand in The Chase coming out of the Enjoy Illinois 300 at Gateway and heading to Bristol Motor Speedway for Saturday’s Bass Pro Shops Night Race (7:30 p.m. ET, USA Network, HBO Max, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).

RELATED: Gateway results | Full Cup Series standings

Chase Changer

A trip to Victory Lane for Larson created the most significant leap in The Chase so far, vaulting a stunning five positions to second in the standings, nine points behind series leader Denny Hamlin. Among the drivers he passed were Christopher Bell, Ryan Blaney, Tyler Reddick, Chase Briscoe and Ty Gibbs, leaving Larson as the only Chevrolet driver inside The Chase standings’ top eight.

The other big mover on Sunday afternoon was Carson Hocevar, who gained three positions in points after a noisy week surrounding his conflict with Brad Keselowski from one week earlier. Hocevar jumped to ninth in the standings, but he only gained one point on Hamlin, trailing by 89 markers after Darlington and now 88 back after Gateway.

But the melees of the day wreaked the most havoc at Gateway as 14 of the 16 Chase drivers landed in an incident, according to Racing Insights, with Team Penske’s Joey Logano and Austin Cindric leaving with the cleanest performances.

The two drivers who paid the steepest price were Joe Gibbs Racing’s Chase Briscoe and Spire Motorsports’ Daniel Suárez, both of whom fell three spots in the standings. Briscoe dropped to eighth in points, 59 points back of teammate Hamlin. Suárez faces a more dire situation, falling to last in the 16-driver rundown and 119 points out of first place. Suárez also incurred the biggest points loss to the leader this week, losing 25 points to Hamlin from where he entered Gateway to where he left.

The Chase Board

While The Chase Board shuffled mightily this week — only Hamlin, Ty Gibbs and Bubba Wallace retained their positions before and after Gateway — there is suddenly a clearer division between the top and bottom halves of the points standings.

Briscoe marks the bottom of the best at eighth, still within 59 points of Hamlin but trailing Larson, Bell, Blaney, Reddick, Gibbs and Logano. The other eight drivers, from Hocevar in ninth to Suárez in 16th, all enter Bristol facing a deficit of 88 or more points with eight races remaining. That includes heavy hitters like Wallace, 2020 Cup Series champion Chase Elliott and William Byron.

For Team Penske, Sunday was largely a missed opportunity, especially for Blaney and Logano, both of whom expected to fight for the win at the flat, 1.25-mile oval that best fits their teams’ strengths. Logano won the pole, led a race-high 96 laps and nabbed 19 stage points before finishing third, but even he was left “bitter” following a 54-point day that could have been a 74-point day had he won instead. Blaney’s Lap 155 brake failure negated the No. 12 team’s drive toward the front of the field and dropped him to 35th in the rundown; fourth-place stage points in the opening two segments salvaged what could have been a two-point result into 16 points instead.

Meanwhile, championship pursuits are growing increasingly difficult for the back half of The Chase field. Eight races provide plenty of opportunities to go on a run and tear into the points gaps in front of these drivers, but their mulligans may all be gone already. Elliott and Chris Buescher both suffered brake failures Sunday at Gateway, while Suárez, Preece and Wallace each found trouble multiple times through the caution-filled event. Byron mustered a fourth-place finish — matching his best since Chicagoland Speedway on July 5 — but a Darlington engine failure and zero Gateway stage points still leave him 15th, 114 points behind Hamlin — one spot better than he entered but facing exactly the same deficit leaving St. Louis.

Next Up

The Bristol Night Race is back, highlighting one of the NASCAR schedule’s most iconic venues with some of the highest stakes. While “The Last Great Colosseum” won’t feature any sort of cutoff race with playoffs in the past, there will be no shortage of drama on the Tennessee high banks — especially not after 18 caution flags flew last weekend at Gateway.

Ty Gibbs scored his first career Cup win this spring in a photo finish with Ryan Blaney at Bristol with Kyle Larson hot on their tails. All three should factor into the outcome of Saturday night’s showdown, which could significantly alter the postseason picture. And don’t sleep on Christopher Bell, who won last year’s Bristol Night Race after a late-race restart.

Larson is historically great at Bristol, with three wins and nine top fives in his last 12 starts there. But his Hendrick Motorsports teammates in The Chase haven’t found that same success. Elliott has just two top fives at Bristol since the Next Gen car was introduced in 2022; Byron has one. Elliott has finished 15th or worse in each of his last three Bristol starts. Byron has one top 10 in his last four Bristol tries.

Hamlin has had an unsteady start to The Chase, plagued in part by bad pit stops at bad times, but still enters Bristol with the points lead. The No. 11 Toyota driver has two wins and seven top 10s in his last eight Bristol starts.