NASCAR.com’s Pat DeCola ranks the 16 Cup Series drivers in The Chase presented by Mobil 1 after William Byron’s win at Martinsville Speedway and before Sunday’s race at Homestead-Miami Speedway (3 p.m. ET, NBC, HBO Max, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
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Analysis: Getting lapped by the teammate who eventually won the race isn’t exactly the ideal prelude to a championship celebration, but Larson still walked out of Martinsville feeling plenty good. Larson and crew chief Cliff Daniels gambled on staying out through Stage 1 at Martinsville, and William Byron promptly drove past the No. 5 on fresh tires. Larson eventually got his lap back, scratched out a ninth-place finish and watched the two drivers chasing him in points manage only sixth and 10th. It was hardly a convincing afternoon — NASCAR Insights rated him just 20th in speed — but the championship lead remains a commanding 67 points with one race left. The defending champion now returns to Homestead-Miami Speedway, where he won in March 2025, needing to score just nine points to clinch his third title regardless of what anybody else does. Quite the position for a driver who couldn’t buy a victory for 51 consecutive races earlier this season, and one of the greatest in-season turnarounds the sport’s ever seen.
Analysis: Hamlin started on the pole at his best track, then made it all the way to Turn 3 on Lap 3 before things started going sideways. A missed shift surrendered the lead to teammate Ty Gibbs, and a strategy call to stay on old tires through the opening stage ultimately backfired as the No. 11 dropped through the field. Contact involving Joey Logano and Bell later sent Hamlin spinning, though he eventually recovered to finish sixth. After leading 292 laps there in the spring and entering Sunday with six Martinsville victories and the 5 car not at its best, this was about as disappointing a way to gain three points on Larson as one could imagine. Hamlin’s three Homestead wins are certainly a reason to expect him up front this weekend. They’re not, by themselves, a solution to a 70-point championship deficit.
Analysis: Bell has managed to become Larson’s closest championship challenger while spending much of the past two weeks making life unnecessarily difficult for himself. The Talladega pit-road spin was bad enough, but Martinsville brought a speeding penalty during a green-flag stop, followed by an incident involving Logano and teammate Hamlin that sent both Joe Gibbs Racing cars spinning. Somehow, Bell still scored points in both stages, finished 10th and moved ahead of Hamlin into second in the standings. He won at Homestead in 2023, so there’s at least a reasonable track-history argument for the No. 20 making some noise Sunday. But considering he was only five points behind Larson entering Talladega, it’s a pretty remarkable development that Bell now finds himself 67 back with one shot remaining.
Analysis: Winning consecutive races at Las Vegas and Charlotte seemed like a pretty effective way to announce yourself as a serious championship contender. Briscoe did exactly that, yet he’ll arrive at Homestead mathematically eliminated after following those victories with 33rd at Talladega and 14th at Martinsville. The latter wasn’t particularly encouraging even without the misfortune that defined Talladega, with the No. 19 ranking 19th in speed despite another strong afternoon from the series’ top-rated pit crew. It’s been an undeniably impressive season for Briscoe, with three victories and a legitimate place among NASCAR’s elite, but the last two weeks have exposed just how difficult it is to sustain that kind of run. At least the accomplishments that preceded them aren’t going anywhere.
Analysis: By the time Martinsville reached Lap 303, Byron had led more laps Sunday than he had in the first 34 races of 2026 combined. He wasn’t even close to finished, either. After an early green-flag pit stop helped position the No. 24 to take control, Byron eventually led 362 of 500 laps, swept the stages and cruised to his fourth Martinsville victory, ending a 35-race winless drought dating to the same event last fall. His runner-up finish at Talladega and victory Sunday are now the two best results of a season that had been frustratingly ordinary by Byron’s standards. And while the championship is out of reach, the No. 24 certainly picked an interesting time to start looking like the dominant machine we’d expected to see all year. If nothing else, Homestead suddenly has another very credible contender for the trophy, and the arrow is still pointing up for 2027.
Analysis: Elliott has finished in the top four at Martinsville in six consecutive starts, including a victory this spring and Sunday’s runner-up. That’s a pretty tremendous stretch at one of the sport’s most demanding tracks, particularly considering how difficult it can be to pass there. He was second in speed Sunday, his pit crew ranked first and yet he still never led a lap. That’s what happens when your teammate has a car as thoroughly dominant as Byron’s was, and with No. 24’s consecutive-season win streak at stake. Elliott’s two-win season of his own has occasionally gotten lost in the larger Hendrick Motorsports conversation, especially with Larson about to collect another championship, but the No. 9 has hardly been an afterthought on the track lately.
Analysis: Blaney was running eighth at Martinsville when he drove into the back of Josh Berry on Lap 252, heavily damaging the No. 12 and ultimately winding up 59 laps down in 35th. That followed a 38th-place finish at Talladega, a particularly miserable sequence for a driver who had strung together four consecutive top fives before the superspeedway trip. The absurd part is that NASCAR Insights still ranks Blaney first in season-long speed, passing and second in defense, and he’s no longer in title contention. And if that discrepancy seems familiar, Homestead in March 2025 was a bit of a microcosm of how much of this year went for him: Blaney led a race-high 124 laps before an engine failure ended his afternoon.
Analysis: Homestead is the site of one of the most spectacular moments of Reddick’s Cup career, when he passed Hamlin and Blaney on the final lap in 2024 to steal the victory and advance to the Championship 4. Two years later, he returns with six wins — more than anybody else this season — yet absolutely no chance of claiming the championship. That’s a pretty strange combination, though it accurately reflects a year in which the No. 45’s early dominance eventually gave way to a much less convincing second half before a minor Chase resurgence. His 12th-place finish at Martinsville wasn’t especially memorable, with the car ranking 16th in speed despite Reddick’s second-place passing rating. But if there’s one track where he might be able to conjure up something special to close on a good note, we’ve already seen what he can do at this one.
Analysis: While the championship attention at Joe Gibbs Racing remained primarily on Hamlin and Bell, it was Gibbs who delivered the organization’s best performance at Martinsville. He took advantage of Hamlin’s missed shift to grab the lead on Lap 3, paced the field for 44 circuits overall and scored 17 stage points before finishing third. NASCAR Insights rated him first in passing and third in speed, and his fourth-place finish there in March means he’s now recorded top fives in both Martinsville races this season. The two-trophy regular season established Gibbs as a legitimate Cup winner, but the past few months have certainly tested his consistency. Sunday, though, was a pretty convincing reminder that the No. 54 can be one of the best cars in the field on short tracks.
Analysis: Logano managed to get involved in a three-car spin, deal with a loose left-front wheel and leave pit road with a wedge wrench still in the window – all in the same Martinsville race. And this was just a week after flipping at Talladega. The particularly aggravating part for the three-time champion is that the car has been better than the results suggest but all the calamity took him out of contention. Logano ranked seventh in speed and first on restarts Sunday, was running third before the green-flag pit cycle that produced the wheel issue and ultimately finished 18th. Add in the Phoenix stage sweep and Talladega Stage 2 victory, and there’s plenty of evidence that Team Penske has found something recently. The execution, however, hasn’t been quite so convincing.
Analysis: One of the more encouraging details buried in Wallace’s recent results is that NASCAR Insights ranks him third in defense and ninth in speed for the season, which at this point is a tremendous sample size. His eighth-place finish at Martinsville offered a cleaner demonstration of that competitiveness after several races in which accidents or mistakes left the No. 23 with considerably less than it showed it was capable of. He also finished sixth in Stage 2 and had the fifth-rated pit crew Sunday. Homestead could be especially interesting: Wallace led 56 laps there in March 2025 before finishing third behind Larson and Alex Bowman. With the championship pressure gone and a car that has shown legitimate speed lately, he has an opportunity to finish 2026 on a much more satisfying note.
Analysis: Cindric’s Martinsville finishing position is almost completely disconnected from how the No. 2 actually performed. He qualified fourth, finished seventh in Stage 1 and ranked sixth in speed before contact with Carson Hocevar on Lap 210 badly damaged the front end and eventually sent him to the garage. The result was 36th, 278 laps down, following another wreck-marred afternoon at Talladega. After looking so strong at Kansas and Vegas, Cindric has now gone four consecutive races without a top 10. Not exactly the kind of return Team Penske had in mind for its late-season improvement, but Homestead’s worn-out intermediate layout offers one final opportunity to put that newfound speed to better use.
Analysis: For the second consecutive week, Preece was one of the more interesting drivers during the opening stage. He finished second in the first segment at Talladega after helping RFK Racing execute its unusual three-car breakaway, then led 41 laps and finished third in Stage 1 at Martinsville. Unfortunately, Sunday’s promising run ended when a right-rear wheel failure sent the No. 60 spinning from fifth on Lap 225. He eventually finished 23rd, with his pit crew ranking 36th of 37 teams for the afternoon. There was some genuine speed here, and Preece has been showing more of it than the recent finishes suggest. A broken wheel is a pretty lousy way to reward that progress, though.
Analysis: There’s a lot of talent in the No. 77, but Martinsville was another reminder that Hocevar and Co. still have plenty of sharpening up to do. A 16-second green-flag pit stop came from difficulty removing the right-rear wheel, and the afternoon also included a spin in Turn 4 and questionable contact with Cindric that badly damaged the No. 2. Hocevar finished 21st, following yet another super-encouraging Talladega run with a rather forgettable trip to Virginia. More concerning is the pit-road picture: 14 crew mistakes and 112 net positions lost this season — the second-worst total in the series. For a driver who’s already demonstrated winning ability, that’s an awful lot of ground to keep giving away.
Analysis: Talladega at least gave Buescher an interesting story to tell, with 53 laps led, a stage victory and that remarkable RFK Racing strategy before the late wreck ruined his afternoon, but Martinsville offered considerably less to discuss. He started 18th, finished 24th, scored no stage points and never looked particularly threatening despite ranking an above-average 13th in speed. His pit crew continues to perform exceptionally well, sitting fourth in the series for the season, but even that hasn’t been enough to produce the kind of results Buescher was regularly delivering earlier in the year. A sixth-place finish at Homestead in March 2025 is at least a more promising reference point for the finale.
Analysis: Only eight cars ranked worse than Suárez in speed at Martinsville, where the No. 7 started 24th, finished 28th and failed to score a stage point. There wasn’t a mechanical failure or a major accident to explain away the result, either. It was simply another afternoon without much competitive pace, continuing a Chase that has rarely resembled the season Suárez envisioned after a signature Coca-Cola 600 win in May. That victory was memorable enough to stand on its own, but the overall performance since then has been difficult to comprehend.