Who… should you be talking about after the race?
With just three weeks left until a new NASCAR Cup Series champion is crowned, Denny Hamlin made sure he’d be one of the four drivers in the mix. Hamlin only led nine laps at Las Vegas Motor Speedway on Sunday (Oct. 12), but he led the one that mattered, winning the South Point 400 by 1.533 seconds over Kyle Larson.
Hamlin’s car was at its best on short runs, and he got one with a pair of late cautions setting up a 14-lap drag race for the win. Hamlin restarted in the third row, but he quickly moved into third. From there, he was able to get a run on Larson, who had led a race-high 129 laps, for second. Then he was able to easily run down and dispatch teammate Chase Briscoe, who had taken only two tires on his final stop, for the race win.
The win was the 60th of Hamlin’s career, moving him into a tie with Kevin Harvick for 10th all-time in Cup Series history. He dedicated his emotional victory to his father, who has had some recent health issues.
Hamlin will race for his first career Cup title at Phoenix Raceway on Nov. 2.
On the other hand…
With just over 30 laps to go in the race, William Byron was looking strong. He had led three times for 55 laps, including winning the first stage, and he was strong on the long runs.
After his final pit stop, Byron thought the entire field had cycled through their stops, but a few drivers had yet to come in for service. One of those was Ty Dillon, who was preparing to make his final stop as Byron came off turn 4. Byron was running the low line off the corner and didn’t see a signal from Dillon, running a half lane higher.
Dillon thought his spotter had informed Byron’s that they were pitting (and he might have, but Byron never got the message). If Dillon did have his hand out the window, the universal sign to let other drivers know he was pitting, Byron closed too fast to see it and plowed into the back of the No. 10, stripping the right-side door off the No. 24 and crumpling both cars. Christopher Bell narrowly missed the incident.
The incident ended both drivers’ races early. Both were evaluated and released from the infield care center relatively unscathed considering the severity of the hit. The end result is that Byron’s playoff run is now in jeopardy, though the outcome could have been much worse.
What… does this mean for the points standings?
Hamlin is probably the only playoff driver who will get a good night’s sleep between now and next week’s race at Talladega Superspeedway, NASCAR’s answer to the roulette wheel.
Larson is 35 points above the fifth-place cut line, a decent margin but not quite enough to feel safe given the remaining races in this round.
Bell is third, 15 points behind Larson, while Briscoe sits fourth, five markers behind Bell.
Byron, the regular season champion, finds himself on the wrong side of the line for the first time with 15 points to make up. His teammate Chase Elliott is sixth, 23 points below the cut line. Joey Logano is another point behind Elliott in seventh, while Ryan Blaney finds himself in a deep hole after an early exit on Sunday following a lap 72 crash in turn 4 and is 31 points below the cut line.
While the deficit for Byron is surmountable, Elliott, Logano and Blaney will likely need a win to move on. The difficulty of scratching back on points is that they not only have to outpoint Briscoe, but also each other. That makes the path into the title race tough without a win.
But in case you were ready to count anyone out, all four have a win at at least one of the two tracks they’ll visit before the final elimination.
Where… did he come from?
There wasn’t much fanfare from the broadcast, but after starting a lowly 32nd, Kyle Busch made some steady gains on the day. While Brad Keselowski was getting some attention from the broadcast booth for his forward progress (both drivers had a net gain of 24 spots), Busch was in stealth mode as he worked his way to eighth place by the checkered flag.
Once upon a time, a Busch top 10 would hardly be news, but in 2025, this is his first top 10 since the Southern 500 last month and just his second since Sonoma Raceway back in June. The season has been a struggle for Busch and Richard Childress Racing as a whole, but there is still something to be said for finishing the season strong.
When… was the moment of truth?
There has been a lot of talk about communications between drivers and teams recently.
First, it was revealed on the Door Bumper Clear podcast that non-playoff teams are not allowed to feed points information to their drivers during a playoff race or risk a penalty from NASCAR.
That actually makes a lot of sense in that it at least cuts down on teams and manufacturers attempting to manipulate the finish to the favor of a specific driver advancing. Will there still be some level of team orders? Yes. But this limits the amount that can be made up on the fly.
Sunday highlighted another gap in communication. Byron had had the best car for much of the day before his crash with Dillon. Byron thought the pit cycle was over and Dillon thought his spotter had informed Byron’s. If that was the case, Byron’s spotter didn’t communicate it to Byron in time.
But is there really a safer way? Outside of the driver pitting indicating it by waving his hand out the window and his spotter relaying to other spotters, maybe a rear window light that the driver could activate could be a thing, but in this case, Byron’s closing rate was so fast, would a light have made a difference? It’s hard to say.
Incidents of that type are thankfully fairly rare. Unfortunately, it’s not something that can likely be eliminated completely. Should NASCAR look at more options? Of course, but there might not be anything more that could be done at this time.
Why… should you be paying attention this week?
Just when you thought it was safe to think about a title favorite … Talladega shows up.
2025 marks the first time the superspeedway is this deep in the playoffs, and while, frankly, that’s probably a mistake, it will certainly bring some mayhem to the title favorites and the field alike.
Talladega is entertaining for fans, but it’s a huge roll of the dice for the teams. Superspeedway racing is a specific skill, but having it is no guarantee of success because the pack will be so tight that all it takes to set off a multi-car crash is the slightest wrong move.
Four of the remaining championship hopefuls have two or more wins at ‘Dega: Blaney (3), Logano (3), Hamlin (2) and Elliott (2).
The best in the field at the 2.66-mile superspeedway missed the playoffs in 2025, but they are still looking for a statement win. Keselowski has six wins at Talladega and is certainly hungry for a win – he’s winless since the spring race at Darlington Raceway in 2024.
As for a real dark horse to sneak up and surprise everyone? Keep one eye on Todd Gilliland. Gilliland has three top 10s in seven starts, but he also has an average finish of 14.7, fourth among the current field. Front Row Motorsports always seems to bring good cars to the superspeedways, so Gilliland is worth a look.
How… did this race stack up?
A for effort. It tried to be a good race, but save a bit of chaos on late restarts, it was just mediocre at best.
While the Next Gen car has been decent on intermediate tracks for the most part, LVMS hasn’t been particularly exciting.
This week, the final restart looked like it would lead to an exciting finish with only a handful of laps left, but other than Hamlin, nobody looked capable of making much of a race of it. Larson might have put up more of a fight, but he seemed to be content to race for points at the end.
Hamlin’s run to the front was impressive, but it wasn’t really a battle on any front. He got held up a couple of times, sure, but not for long enough to make any difference in the outcome. Hamlin was the show at the end, and the way he’d run most of the day wasn’t indicative of the finish he would have, but his performance alone didn’t make up for the rest of the day which was standard clean-air-is-king fare.
LVMS is a great track for the fans in attendance with its proximity to Sin City and fan amenities, but the racing itself hasn’t been as good as it has at Kansas Speedway or the oval at Charlotte Motor Speedway.
Amy is an 20-year veteran NASCAR writer and a six-time National Motorsports Press Association (NMPA) writing award winner, including first place awards for both columns and race coverage. As well as serving as Photo Editor, Amy writes The Big 6 (Mondays) after every NASCAR Cup Series race. She can also be found working on her bi-weekly columns Holding A Pretty Wheel (Tuesdays) and Only Yesterday (Wednesdays). A New Hampshire native whose heart is in North Carolina, Amy’s work credits have extended everywhere from driver Kenny Wallace’s website to Athlon Sports. She can also be heard weekly as a panelist on the Hard Left Turn podcast that can be found on AccessWDUN.com's Around the Track page.