Did You Notice? … The 2026 NASCAR Cup Series regular season is already past the one-quarter mark. The Easter Bunny gave the gift of a breather, one of just two weekends off teams will get over NASCAR’s 38-race marathon of a calendar.
It’s a chance to stop and reset after the sport started with a bang, with its Daytona 500 Super Bowl followed by races at virtually every track type we’ll see on the schedule: short track, intermediate, road course and superspeedway.
Who’s got the edge so far and what are the biggest storylines we’ve seen develop? Here’s seven worth following as the sport gears up for 16 straight race weekends beginning Sunday (April 12) in Bristol, Tenn.
Can Tyler Reddick Keep Winning?
Reddick and his 23XI Racing Toyota team has come out of the box swinging. He became the first driver since Bill Elliott in 1992 to win four of the sport’s first six races. Two of them (Daytona 500, spring race at Darlington Raceway) were his first wins at the sport’s crown jewel racetracks.
In the span of just five months, Reddick has gone from a winless 2025 and public frustrations about 23XI’s on- and off-track performance to watching the organization bulldoze by NASCAR in court, then make a 180-degree turn on the racetrack. He’s already got more laps led (189) then all of last season while setting a career high for wins in a season in just seven weeks.
Leading the standings by 82 points over Ryan Blaney, Reddick’s gap is already so large he could skip Bristol and still remain on top. But we’ve seen sizzling regular season starts fizzle as the year goes on: Kevin Harvick in 2020 and Chase Elliott in 2022 come to mind. Even Awesome Bill back in 1992 couldn’t hold onto his lead under a full-season points system: he wound up finishing runner-up to Alan Kulwicki.
That makes the next stretch of racetracks crucial for Reddick. His last top five on Bristol concrete was six years ago; his last top five at Kansas Speedway was two-and-a-half years ago. Add in the Russian Roulette element at Talladega Superspeedway and it’s clear no lead is bulletproof, at least not yet. 23XI has never won a championship and will need to prove its staying power.
Denny Hamlin‘s Rebounding Just Fine
23XI trial aside, Hamlin suffered through one of his worst offseasons ever. There was the tragic death of his father, Dennis, in a December housefire that left his mom seriously hurt. While combing through the rubble, Hamlin fell and re-aggravated an old shoulder injury, a tear he’s pushed off repairing until after the 2026 season ends in November. And his team, Joe Gibbs Racing, lost its Competition Director, Hamlin’s former crew chief Chris Gabehart, who is now in a mud-slinging lawsuit with JGR after jumping ship to Spire Motorsports.
Add in the bitter championship loss last November at Phoenix Raceway and you couldn’t blame Hamlin if, at 45 years old, he chose retirement over running it back. It did take a while to shake off the rust: runs of 31st, 13th and 10th the first three races left the No. 11 team underachieving.
Not for long. Hamlin has since won at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, finished runner-up at Martinsville Speedway at the end of March and now leads the circuit in laps led (444). He’s third in points while the race team he owns sits on top with co-owner (and former NBA superstar) Michael Jordan becoming a powerful force behind the scenes.
Turns out 2026, which some might have thought would be a rebuilding year, may offer yet another shot at that elusive Cup title. The next few months will be about developing the consistency needed for a 10-race Chase: how many wins will he rack up in the process? Perhaps just as important: as tragedy fades, how much will Hamlin assume an off-track role in helping shape the sport’s future after 23XI’s trial success?
New Playoff, Same Old Story – Winning Matters Most
NASCAR’s move from a winner-take-all, multi-round playoff format back to a 10-race Chase for the Championship has been well received by both fans and drivers. But if there was one concern heading into 2026, it was winning wouldn’t be rewarded enough within a system tilted back toward consistency.
Turns out there was nothing to worry about.
Seven races in, 1-2-3-4 in the point standings are the four Cup drivers to win races this season. It’s clear the 15-point bonus added for first place has been enough to assure this year’s champion will have plenty of trophies on the shelf. It’s also eliminated a long-term problem since the advent of stage racing: the actual race winner is all but guaranteed the most points, even if they fail to finish top 10 in either stage.
So, don’t expect Matt Kenseth in 2003 or Terry Labonte in 1996. A 10-win, Kyle Larson champion in 2021 is far more likely.
Underdog Surprise: Spire Motorsports
Fun fact: if the season ended today, Spire would have more Chevy teams in the Chase (two) than any team besides Hendrick Motorsports.
While Hendrick has felt a step behind at times while working with a new Chevy Camaro body for 2026, the changes seemed to have helped Spire get on a more level playing field. Add in Gabehart’s role leading the organization and, suddenly, their three drivers are sitting 15th, 16th and 17th in the standings. Spire had a total of six top-five finishes during a tumultuous 2025 season; seven races into 2026, they’ve nearly matched that total with four.
You might have expected Carson Hocevar to keep improving, a driver who remains one of the sport’s top prospects. But Spire newcomer Daniel Suarez is driving with a chip on his shoulder after former employer Trackhouse Racing left him stranded.
Then there’s Michael McDowell, posting the second-best average finish of his career (17.1) while contending for a second Daytona 500 win. There’s much for them to prove during this next stretch, but getting all three into the Chase, once considered a longshot, now feels like a distinct possibility.
Can RFK Racing Unseat Team Penske As Ford’s Top Team?
Right now, it’s Penske, not RFK, who has the lone Ford win of the season: Ryan Blaney taking the checkered flag at Phoenix. But by every other metric, it feels like it’s the Brad Keselowski-owned RFK operation that has a better track record seven races in.
The trio of Keselowski, Chris Buescher and Ryan Preece are all sitting 13th or better in points. Over 200 laps led edges out Penske’s total of 191, and the team was even in contention to finish 1-2-3 a few weeks ago at Darlington. They’ve collected seven top-10 results, finished every race and completed all but one lap, establishing a track record of consistency.
That’s where the RFK momentum stands out. Joey Logano at Penske has had some wild swings, from a pole at Phoenix and two third-place finishes to a 33rd at Darlington, a race where he was the slowest car in the field for long stretches. And Austin Cindric remains an enigma, posting two DNFs already and a stretch of five races where he failed to post a single top-15 result.
With Bristol coming up, a track RFK has won at in the past (2022), don’t be surprised if they reach the win column as soon as this weekend. And with Talladega at the end of the month, Preece is one to watch as the drafting prowess of this organization could power him to his first win.
Is The Kyle Busch-Richard Childress Racing Divorce Inevitable?
The Kyle Busch-RCR relationship already seemed to be on thin ice entering 2026; both sides appeared to renew simply due to a lack of other options. Since Busch posted three wins in his first 15 races with RCR back in 2023, he’s since been shut out of victory lane. Last year saw him post career lows in top fives (three), laps led (88), and points finish (21st).
A switch to new crew chief James Pohlman for 2026 led to a Daytona 500 pole and high expectations at the RCR camp. But Busch ran 15th in the season opener, leading 19 laps and fading in the race’s second half, setting the stage for another mediocre season.
Busch has already crashed out once, spun or hit the wall at multiple other races and failed to finish higher than 12th in seven races. He joins Cindric, Ross Chastain, and Chase Briscoe as the biggest names on the outside of the Chase looking in: Busch is already 48 points behind Suarez and the 16th-place cutoff.
The difference between Busch and the trio of others is he’s the one most likely to change teams. It feels like April and May is the last chance each side has to work out the kinks; otherwise, other rides may come calling. Spire itself comes to mind, a place where Busch is already moonlighting in Trucks.
Connor Zilisch‘s Rocky Road As a Cup Rookie
I thought of putting Alex Bowman in this space: the full-time driver of a coveted ride, the No. 48 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet, has already missed four races for vertigo and seems destined to end this season with a pink slip.
But Bowman’s struggles, which have been well documented for a while now, were somewhat expected. The struggles of one of the sport’s most hyped rookies in a generation? Those have come out of left field.
Zilisch, a 10-race winner in the then-NASCAR Xfinity Series last year, sits 33rd in the standings. He’s got fewer points (80) than the gap between he and 16th place Suarez in the standings, the driver he replaced over at Trackhouse.
There have been some incidents not of Zilisch’s making so far: unfortunate incidents at Daytona and Atlanta Motor Speedway that stifled his momentum. But Zilisch has looked more lost than expected, failing to lead a single lap thus far while posting just one top-15 result: a 14th at Circuit of the Americas in March. Teammate Shane van Gisbergen was a strong second in that same race, two road course experts showing the gap between them in experience.
You would think Zilisch would come up to speed as he settles into the next portion of the schedule. Only one of his wins last year, after all, came before the middle of June. But 33rd in points won’t cut it for a race team that expected more from its young star; it could also make Trackhouse expendable to him being poached by somebody else (Hmm. Did I mention Bowman and Hendrick at the top of this point?)
Follow Tom Bowles on X at @NASCARBowles
The author of Did You Notice? (Wednesdays) Tom spends his time overseeing Frontstretch’s 50+ staff members as its majority owner and Editor-in-Chief. Based outside Philadelphia, Bowles is a two-time Emmy winner in NASCAR television and has worked in racing production with FOX, TNT, and ESPN while appearing on-air for SIRIUS XM Radio and FOX Sports 1's former show, the Crowd Goes Wild. He most recently consulted with SRX Racing, helping manage cutting-edge technology and graphics that appeared on their CBS broadcasts during 2021 and 2022.
You can find Tom’s writing here, at CBSSports.com and Athlonsports.com, where he’s been an editorial consultant for the annual racing magazine for 15 years.
Enjoyed this one. Agree with the vast majority of it, which probably means it’s all wrong. Thoughts on a couple of points.
Can Reddick keep winning?: Sure, but not at the historic rate he’s been winning. His amazing start is a statistical anomaly, and he will almost certainly regress to the mean. That said, won’t be at all surprised if 23XI continues to challenge JGR as top Toyota team, and possibly supplants them.
New Playoffs, same old story: Yep. It was clear from the start the changes to crowning a season champion would be subtle, and not enough to fix the problem. If Reddick managed to continue dominating for the first 26 races, it would matter little. A couple of DNFs in the final ten races would likely result in crowning someone else as champion.
Kyle Busch/RCR split: Would not be a surprise at all. Despite a random blip here and there, RCR has been on a slow decline since before the death of Dale Earnhardt. Even back then, they had been supplanted by Hendrick as top Chevy team. I see nothing to indicate this will change. I have never been a Kyle Busch fan, but he is enough of a name he could likely get another shot elsewhere. It’s difficult to tell if his struggles are due to the current gen car, eroding skill with age, or RCR’s overarching issues. One more team would determine whether it’s time for Shrub to hang up his spurs.
Zilisch struggles: Well noted in the article that Zilisch did not begin 2025 in the O’Reilly series as the dominant force he became as the season progressed. (Still ridiculous neither he nor Allgaier were crowned champion.) I’d guess it’ll take a year or two for Zilisch to acclimate, though I won’t be surprised if he figures out road courses before then.
You forgot Ross Chastain is now the most popular driver and must be protected from Danial Suarez