With NASCAR's Chase Halfway Home, Is It Larson's Championship To Lose?

As Chase Briscoe crossed the finish line first to score his second win of the NASCAR Cup Series season, it officially marked the halfway point of the 10-race Chase for the Championship. And if the opening five races of the Chase are any indicator, the competition is going to be hard-pressed to beat Kyle Larson, who is seeking his second consecutive NASCAR Cup Series title and third of his career.

And while Larson, who had a good but not great regular season, has come to life winning two of the first five races of the Chase and seeming like a contender to win each week, it was his runner-up finish in Sunday's South Point 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway that truly showcased that he and his No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports team have what it takes to be champions when the checkered flag waves at Homestead-Miami Speedway next month.

Denny Hamlin, Larson's main competition for the championship, had Larson right where he wanted him in the opening Stage of Sunday's race. Larson's No. 5 car was ill-handling to the point that his crew chief, Cliff Daniels, called for a lengthy adjustment on pit road early in the race.

An extended pit stop for our points leader. @KyleLarsonRacin will lose multiple spots on the race track. pic.twitter.com/iMc2iv2faJ
— NASCAR (@NASCAR) October 4, 2026

The end result was a pit stop that took more than 26 seconds, dropping Larson a lap down to Hamlin, who started from the pole and was leading the race at the time. It looked very much like Hamlin was about to easily erase 10 of the 26 points that he trailed Larson in the standings heading into the day.

However, a caution on Lap 44 for Zane Smith spinning in Turn 4 changed the entire complexion of the race. That, coupled with a head-scratching strategic move by Hamlin's crew chief, Chris Gayle, put Larson back in a position to have a chance to break even or possibly extend his point lead.

With Larson not far enough up in the field at the time of caution to be the free-pass recipient, the driver faced an uphill battle if he was going to get back on the lead lap.

However, this is where a poor decision by Hamlin's team came into play.

Gayle called Hamlin to pit road under this caution, while Larson was told to stay on the race track by Daniels. With Hamlin hitting pit road, along with the other lead-lap cars ahead of Larson on the track at the time of the caution, Larson, a lapped car, cycled ahead of the lead-lap cars on track behind the pace car under the caution. In these situations, NASCAR waves the lapped-down cars positioned ahead of the lead-lap cars around the pace car.

Just like that, Larson received a gift from his biggest challenger for the NASCAR Cup Series title, as he was now back on the lead lap.

"It's upsetting. It's upsetting personally, on me," Gayle reflected on the strategic call following the race. "I wish I had stayed out on that pit stop on Lap 38, or whatever. It was right on the cusp of what I had thought -- I knew five guys were going to stay out."

And as Larson spent the rest of the race making the No. 11 team regret that decision, Hamlin's day came undone.

Hamlin, who was in position to win Stage 1 prior to the Lap 44 caution, would find himself trying to rally back through the field on his fresh tires. With three laps remaining in Stage 1, Hamlin worked his way into fourth place, but he would lose control of his No. 11 machine and spin out.

OH NO!

Hamlin spins, but he keeps the No. 11 Toyota out of the wall! pic.twitter.com/YP95rMnRcn
— NASCAR (@NASCAR) October 4, 2026

"I was trying to make up the track position that we lost, and trying to push to get it back," Hamlin explained after the race. "And evidently, there were marbles or something up there. It was quite odd."

NASCAR's race control opted to not throw a caution. And in an instant, Hamlin's potential Stage Points were flushed down the toilet.

That's not all. Due to the spin, Hamlin now found himself behind Larson in the actual running order.

While Larson would crack the top-10 at the conclusion of Stage 2, and was rewarded with one Stage Point for that impressive effort, Hamlin, who was suffering from underbody damage due to the spin, was unable to get into the points in Stage 2, which meant the driver, who started his day off with high hopes from the pole position, would end the race without any bonus points from the Stages.

And it wouldn't get any better for Hamlin.

Larson would continue his rally through the final Stage of the race, and in the closing laps, he would find himself locked into a battle for the win with Chase Briscoe. Larson pounded the outside wall in the final turn of the race, which secured the win for Briscoe, but Larson had enough momentum to pull off the runner-up finish.

Hamlin, who then had a fuel pickup issue going into a late-race restart, stumbled to a 16th-place result.

Even on a day where Larson's car was not immediately fast at the drop of the green flag, and the driver lost a lap on pit road getting adjustments made on his car, he and his No. 5 team were able to stay in the game, mentally. And as Hamlin's bad luck unfolded throughout the day, Larson was able to capitalize.

Larson, who is understandably oozing confidence, says he was not surprised by his comeback in Sunday's race.

"Yeah, well, we've done it before. So, it's not like a surprise," Larson said. "And, I don't know, because of that, I was confident that we could dig ourselves out of it and potentially get a win out of the day. And we almost did that."

It was a day that was eerily reminiscent of Jimmie Johnson's six championship runs in the Chase format with Hendrick Motorsports back in the day. Johnson had such a knack for taking a chicken sh-t day, and turning it into chicken salad, that he was described as having a golden horsehoe crammed up his buttocks.

The golden horsehoe appears not to have fallen far from Johnson's rear, as it seems to have remained in the Hendrick Motorsports shop.

At the end of the day, what Larson did on Sunday at Las Vegas is the stuff that championships are made of, at least in championship formats, where more than one race factors into who hoists the Bill France Cup.

Over the last five races, Larson has unquestionably brought his A-game, as he has an astonishing average finish of 2.2.

Meanwhile, Hamlin, the championship favorite heading into the Chase, has put together an average finish of 10.8 over the opening five races of the Chase. If it wasn't for Larson's insane run of races, Hamlin's stretch of races likely wouldn't be considered a bad effort. In fact, Hamlin has done well enough to hold off everyone else in the Chase Grid, aside from Larson, after five races.

However, Hamlin has seen his 25-point advantage, the perks of being the top seed entering the chase, swing into a 40-point deficit as he trails Larson with five races remaining. On the surface, it looks like Hamlin has experienced a 65-point swing, but the situation is far worse than it appears, because Larson wasn't the No. 2 seed heading into the Chase.

Larson entered the Chase as the No. 7 seed, which means he began the Chase with a 55-point deficit to Hamlin. With Larson now up by 40 points, it means he has earned 95 points more than Hamlin over the last five races.

Each week has felt like another stunning blow to Hamlin's hopes to finally capture that elusive first Cup Series championship.

"Not great," Hamlin said about how he felt after Las Vegas.

If Hamlin wants to have any hope of being crowned champion, he will have to stop the bleeding, and he's going to have to apply the first patch of gauze to the wound this weekend at Charlotte Motor Speedway. If he doesn't, this could turn into a Larson runaway championship run.

But Hamlin isn't throwing in the towel just yet.

"Sure, I mean if we can perform speed-wise like we have today, at least in the first Stage before the damage, then yeah, we can [come back]," Hamlin said.

Hamlin continued, "I haven't really digested it, truthfully. Just gotta play the ball from where it lies, and where it lies is that we have a little gap we have to make up. So, we've got to perform at our best."

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