Who… should you be talking about after the checkered flag?
It’s safe to say that Cody Ware will not be receiving a Christmas card from Denny Hamlin this year. Hamlin had a dominant car at Kansas Speedway on Sunday (April 19), starting on the front row and leading six times for 131 of 274 laps.
After the final round of green flag stops, polesitter Tyler Reddick had run Hamlin down in the final 20 laps, but a bobble by Reddick with three laps to go allowed Hamlin to retake the top spot. He was beginning to drive away when Ware spun on his own on the way to the white flag.
With tire wear a big factor and 50 laps on their tires, all of the leaders chose to pit for at least two new ones. Hamlin came off pit road in the lead with Reddick just behind him. Kyle Larson and Christopher Bell, who had both led laps and had strong cars, lined up behind them.
After struggling a bit with restarts earlier in the day, Hamlin got the launch he needed, but Reddick and Bell were hot on his heels and Larson made a run at him.
Bell and Reddick made contact, and Bell bounced off the wall and into Hamlin. Reddick righted the No. 45 and was able to get around Larson in turn three of the final lap in overtime and hold him off to the checkered flag to win the AdventHealth 400 by .118 seconds.
Chase Briscoe, who had taken four tires on his last stop while the leaders took two, charged to a third-place finish, with Hamlin hanging on for fourth and Bubba Wallace finishing a strong run in fifth.
It’s Reddick’s fifth win of 2026 and the 13th of his Cup Series career. He has not gone more than two weeks without a win this year.
23XI Racing had a strong day overall between Reddick’s win, Wallace’s top five and teammates Riley Herbst and Corey Heim finishing 14th and 15th, respectively.
On the other hand…
The 2026 season has been a struggle for a pair of drivers who hold a total of five championships in the last 11 seasons. Three-time champ Joey Logano has two top fives and three top 10s so far this year…but also three finishes of 30th or worse in nine races. One of those came Sunday at Kansas (30th) after starting at the back for adjustments.
Logano and the No. 22 team should be concerned, because outside of a crash at Darlington Raceway, two of those three backmarker finishes were in races where Logano had no contact with other cars and no mechanical failures. Those things can ruin a race, even when the driver runs well and the car has speed. The problem is that Logano hasn’t and the car doesn’t.
The woes that have plagued Kyle Busch also didn’t get any better this weekend. After qualifying 23rd, a flat tire cost Busch a handful of laps and handed him a 35th-place finish. Busch’s issues have been a hot topic in recent weeks, with Hamlin openly questioning Busch’s performance on his podcast last week and Busch angrily responding that he could contend if he had equipment equal to Hamlin’s. Is it the equipment? At least in part, it probably is…but that doesn’t make the reality any prettier.
What… is the big question everyone should be asking after the race?
Thanks to FOX having both the Cup race and IndyCar from Long Beach on Sunday, the Cup race started a little earlier than is the mid-afternoon norm, kicking off at just after two o’clock Eastern time (one o’clock local), an hour earlier than the standard. For East Coast fans, that meant it was over by dinner time. Which, of course, brings up the age-old question: If we can have a Midwest race start at 2:00 p.m. Eastern, why the heck can’t we have East Coast races start earlier?
Television loves the later times as the broadcast runs right up against prime time on the East Coast, and that’s the short answer. But you know who doesn’t love them? East Coasters.
Fans have long lamented the late starts (who remembers races starting at 1 o’clock or even earlier?) because the races run into dinner time at home, and, in the case of fans attending, getting home well into the night. For most, Sunday is a work and/or school night, so that frustration is understandable.
Of course, a three o’clock start is noon on the West Coast, but cutting into lunch seems less intrusive than cutting into Sunday dinner, not to mention getting reluctant kids ready for school the next day, or reluctant adults getting in one last evening of their weekend before the work week.
In an era where NASCAR is searching for ways to resonate with fans, earlier starts could go a long way.
Where… did he come from?
If flying under the radar is a good place for a driver to be, then Brad Keselowski is in a great spot. After suffering a broken femur in an accident during an offseason ski trip, Keselowski entered the season with a question mark hanging over his head.
It’s safe to say he has erased that. Keselowski started 21st on Sunday and didn’t make a lot of noise, but when it ended, there he was in the sixth spot. He’s also in the top 10 in driver points and is one of three drivers to finish every race on the lead lap in 2026 (the other two are Reddick and Ryan Preece, who drives for Keselowski’s organization).
Keselowski’s weekend was a glimpse at how his season has gone so far. He hasn’t been particularly flashy, but he has been rock solid. He has not finished outside the top 20 this season, and he has four top 10s and two top fives. Those numbers might not light up the scoring pylon, but they’re plenty good to carry him into the postseason if he can keep them up.
Oh, and his best track is next on the schedule.
When… are we going to talk about the points?
Under a points system that rewards winning, it should be no surprise that Reddick added to his lead this week. He now leads Hamlin by 105 points after nine weeks. Hamlin takes second over from Ryan Blaney after finishing fourth to Blaney’s lackluster 24th in Kansas. Blaney falls to third, almost doubling his deficit from 62 to 120 points. Ty Gibbs remains in the fourth spot, while Larson supplants teammate Chase Elliott in the top five.
Elliott now sits sixth, 152 points in arrears to Reddick. William Byron and Wallace remain seventh and eighth this week. Keselowski moves up two spots to ninth while Bell slips to 10th.
The big mover of the week was Todd Gilliland, who climbs three spots up the ladder from 26th to 23rd.
Reddick is making it look like it’s his title to lose, but the season is just at the quarter pole. A hot streak by any other driver could bring the No. 45 team back to reality in just a few weeks.
Why… should you be paying attention this week?
The Cup Series hits Talladega Superspeedway on Sunday for 500 miles, and NASCAR made a couple of changes that may shake things up a bit.
The biggest fan concern recently on superspeedways is teams using the guaranteed stage cautions to turn the first half of the race into fuel-saving tedium with drivers running at three-quarters throttle. To counter that, NASCAR changed the stage lengths, which will force green-flag stops early and should help keep mileage out of the game.
Whether that will change how teams attack the race is another story. At a track where the entire field runs under a blanket for much of the day, aggressive racing leads to incidents, and the big pack ensures that many incidents will involve multiple cars. Teams may still play it safe for most of the day, because passing cars early is meaningless if a crash ends your day before the checkers. How much the stage changes will alter the approach to the race remains to be seen.
Austin Cindric is the defending spring winner at Talladega, and he could certainly use the boost that a win would bring him. Keselowski leads all active Cup drivers with six wins, though the last one came in 2021. Keselowski has been solid so far this year, so a seventh win isn’t a stretch. He also has a very strong 13.7 average finish in the last 10 Talladega races, good for third among drivers with at least five starts in that period.
Next on the list, Blaney and Logano have three wins apiece. Byron has the best average finish in the last 10 ‘Dega races at 11.2. If you like an underdog, take a peek at Gilliland, who is second to Byron in average finish for the same period, averaging a 13.1 finish in his eight starts with four top 10s.
How… did this race stack up?
A great finish is not the same as a great race. Sunday’s race was exciting for the last 20 laps, and the finish was good because of an overtime restart, but overall? It wasn’t anything to write home about.
Kansas has been one of the best tracks for the Next Gen car, but this edition wasn’t all that memorable. Even in the pack, there were stretches without enough battles to keep it interesting.
You can have a good race without cautions, and in this case, it was better to let it run organically rather than have a bunch of questionable cautions.
So what made Sunday’s race worth watching?
Tire management was very important. Tire falloff meant that tires could go a full fuel run without failing but at the cost of handling. That’s pretty much the gold standard for what the role tires and tire management should play in a race.
The overtime finish was a good one. Hamlin got a jump but had to hold off Larson, Reddick and Bell, whose turn as the pinball on those final two laps also changed Hamlin’s destiny.
Actually, the laps leading up to Ware’s unfortunate spin were fun to watch as Reddick ran Hamlin down on the final tire run, only to have a hiccup and Hamlin get back by him and have to make another attempt.
Hamlin probably would have won without the caution, so his frustration was understandable, but it was still his race to lose on the restart.
So, while not a great race by Kansas standards, it wasn’t all bad, and it set the standard for how tire management should look.
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.
Bubba is just not this good. What have the 23xi team and now little Gibbs found
No way we should be mentioning bubba with Hamlin, Reddick, bell , Larson
Has plastic returned?
One of the things I love about the west coast, sporting events start and end earlier. :)
like you said last few laps were the best. every time i looked at the tv, it was all strung out.
if i played the lottery on hunches like i get when reddick has the pole in the races this year i’d be a lot richer than i am. i’ve seen jordan at the races more this year than in the past. guess the settlement is enough incentive to show up and see how his teams end up in the finishing order. maybe dega will be bubba’s time in victory lane.
the southern us has been in extreme drought conditions for months. hopefully mother nature will not visit dega this coming weekend.
Penske needs to get the logano team fixed quickly. Its actually a embarrassment to watch. There needs to be some personnel changes on the team to get the chassis working. Its not a driver or horse power issue.