One year later! William Byron and the No. 24 Hendrick Motorsports team dominated at Martinsville Speedway for the second straight fall race, leading 362 laps to win No. 1 of 2026 and claim another iconic grandfather clock.
Of course, Byron wasn’t the only Hendrick Motorsports driver to benefit. Well, sort of. A relatively bumpy performance that stabilized to an “average day” for Kyle Larson at the Virginia 0.526-mile track resulted in six markers lost in The Chase presented by Mobil 1 table. The buried lede, of course, is that Larson still sits 67 points ahead of Christopher Bell and 70 markers ahead of Denny Hamlin, the only two Chasers still in championship contention.
RELATED: Martinsville results | Cup Series standings
Now comes the season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway on Sunday (3 p.m. ET, NBC, HBO Max, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio), with Larson looking to clinch back-to-back championship crowns and the Joe Gibbs Racing duo aiming to play spoiler. Nine prior postseason races have led to this, and if any moment in any of those races went differently, who knows what the conversation would be. Let’s dive into that a little bit more in this week’s “Last Call” segment, with our NASCAR.com insiders discussing the biggest “what-if” of the 2026 Chase.
What was the biggest ‘what-if’ of the 2026 Chase?
Zach Sturniolo: Christopher Bell will be kicking himself for a long time after the Oct. 25 race at Talladega Superspeedway. One week after Larson fell apart at Phoenix Raceway and finally looked vulnerable, Bell was in prime position to keep the No. 5 team honest with three races remaining and trailing Larson by only five points. All Bell needed to do was keep the No. 5 car in sight all race at Talladega, and he’d have a realistic shot of winning the 2026 Cup Series championship. Instead, an apparent error in brake-bias positioning spelled trouble for Bell, who spun his No. 20 car entering pit road and crashed into the wall, finishing 35th, 12 laps down. Sure, maybe Bell would have later been collected in the “Big One” and this point would have proven moot. But this moment alone took control out of Bell’s hands and handed it back to Larson. Bell still mathematically has a chance to win the title this weekend, but as he said Sunday after Martinsville: “We already know.”
Cameron Richardson: If you are the No. 1 seed in a 10-race stretch to win a championship, a key part of hoisting the trophy is keeping the mojo. After a strong regular season, Denny Hamlin’s title hopes took a dip after starting The Chase with an 18th-place result at Darlington Raceway after damage incurred in an incident with Michael McDowell. A slow pit stop by the No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing pit crew catalyzed the eventual downfall of Hamlin’s hopes for that elusive first title. Things worsened for Hamlin after rival Kyle Larson won his first 2026 race at World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway and then lost the points lead to the defending champ after Bristol Motor Speedway. The biggest gaffe came at Las Vegas Motor Speedway when Hamlin pitted during Stage 1, allowing Larson to wave around and return to the lead lap. Hamlin then spun late in the opening stage and finished 16th, while Larson placed second. Any chance to capitalize on rare Larson mistakes was canceled out by Hamlin committing an error of equal consequence. A tale of two seasons bit Hamlin in the end this year: “I feel like the racing gods are picking on me.”
Dustin Albino: When Ryan Blaney reflects on the 2026 Chase, he may see a championship that slipped away. Team Penske and the No. 12 team rebounded from its early-season woes on 1.5-mile tracks, with Blaney scoring top fives at all three intermediate venues in the postseason. But the tracks that typically played to his strengths became his biggest downfall. Despite finishing runner-up at Phoenix, Blaney endured four finishes of 33rd or worse at World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway, Bristol Motor Speedway, Talladega and Martinsville – a costly stretch that dropped him from the No. 2 seed to seventh in the standings. Each setback came under different circumstances. A brake rotor failure derailed him at Gateway; contact with Carson Hocevar at Bristol led to a post-race encounter that left him with a black eye; the No. 12 was caught in the “Big One” at Talladega and a tangle with Team Penske affiliate Josh Berry ended his chances of being competitive at Martinsville. All four incidents could be chalked up to pure racing, but the points lost were significant. How might the championship standings look if Blaney had enjoyed his usual consistency at those venues?
Pat DeCola: What if Austin Hill had just a little more fuel at Talladega? A week after a tire failure at Phoenix gutted Kyle Larson’s Chase lead from 49 points to five, the No. 5 Chevrolet was suddenly staring at another missed opportunity. Larson had fallen from the lead to 11th on the final lap, seemingly headed for a perfectly respectable points day – just not the 71-point monster he wound up with. Hill’s No. 33 Chevy then ran dry coming off Turn 4, breaking up the pack at precisely the moment Larson needed a lane. Somehow, the driver who had gone 58 drafting-track starts without a victory emerged from the scramble with one of the most improbable wins of his career. His five-point championship lead became 73, and he still carries a 67-point advantage into Homestead. Nobody can say where Larson would’ve finished had Hill kept rolling, but 11th instead of first would’ve meant 29 fewer finishing points alone. That’s an enormous swing in a championship fight decided by cumulative points, and it could have dramatically changed the complexion of the season finale, and even last weekend at Martinsville. Funny how one empty fuel tank – belonging to a driver declared for the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series championship and who wasn’t even driving that car the last time we raced at Talladega in the spring – could wind up having so much to do with who wins the 2026 Cup Series title.
Zack Albert: Hard to argue with any of the above, but let’s rewind to the earliest stages of the year. What if Tyler Reddick had been able to replicate just a shred of his early season mojo for The Chase? The 23XI Racing driver won five of the first nine races this season and was anointed a way-too-early favorite for the Cup Series title. Reddick won just once the rest of the way – a Phoenix victory last month that kept him at least slightly Chase-relevant — and endured a troubling midseason slump that cost him the standings lead. Had just a smidge more of that early success carried over, Reddick could’ve at least kept Kyle Larson honest during the final 10 races.