Racing Insights: Who will master Martinsville with Chase stakes pegged?
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The NASCAR Cup Series heads to Martinsville Speedway on Sunday (2 p.m. ET, NBC, HBO Max, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio), where a group of six hungry Chase presented by Mobil 1 drivers hope to pump the brakes on Kyle Larson's championship clinch.
After Larson's victory at Talladega Superspeedway last week – his third of the postseason – the No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports driver heads to the hills of southern Virginia with a 73-point advantage over Denny Hamlin. If Larson scores 59 points in the Xfinity 500, no matter how his competitors fare, he'll be crowned his third Bill France Cup and second in a row next weekend at Homestead-Miami Speedway as long as he starts the race.
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Larson is rock solid at the 0.526-mile Hendrick stronghold, but many of his championship peers also have strong numbers at the iconic short track. Drivers like Hamlin, Christopher Bell and Chase Briscoe need victories to maintain any hope at the championship, meaning all bets are off over 500 laps of close-quarters racing.
See drivers to keep an eye on for the penultimate race of the 2026 season, as well as Racing Insights' full race projections.
DRIVERS TO WATCH
KYLE LARSON: To beat the defending series champion, you're gonna have to knock him out – and Martinsville is a hard place to do that. Larson's finished inside the top 10 in each of the last eight races at "The Paperclip," including an April 2023 win. He owns an average finish of 5.8 in nine Next Gen starts, and that Martinsville success has translated to other short tracks as of late. Larson's finished top 10 in 11 of the last 15 races at this track type, including a P6 finish at Richmond Raceway over the summer that, in hindsight, kickstarted his stellar Chase run. He's just one of three drivers all time with seven top-six finishes in the first eight postseason races, and a strong run Sunday could strengthen his grasp on yet another Cup Series championship.
DENNY HAMLIN: The Chase certainly hasn't gone to plan for this grizzled veteran, but a victory at Martinsville -- one of his best tracks -- could extend the title conversation one more week. Hamlin's six wins in Ridgeway, Virginia, are most among all active drivers, and he owns a total of 15 short-track triumphs. He's the only driver who has finished inside the top 10 in all six short-track races thus far on the schedule. Hamlin has led north of 3,000(!) laps at Martinsville, his most among all tracks, and has top fives in five of the last six races. The No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing driver needs to be within 22 points of Larson to control his own destiny come Homestead-Miami Speedway.
JOEY LOGANO: This year's short-track king is hungry for one more to cap the 2026 season. Each of Logano's three victories this year has come at this track type, starting with a summer North Wilkesboro Speedway dub that all but turned his season around. Logano has finished inside the top 10 in the last 14 Martinsville races, the third-longest streak in track history, and has never recorded a DNF in 35 starts. Sunday marks his 650th career start, and another win would make the No. 22 Team Penske driver just the second to win on the day he celebrated that milestone (Richard Petty, Dover, 1974). Logano remains mathematically eligible to win the championship, but at 100 points back, Racing Insights pegs his odds for a fourth title at just 0.1%.