Up to Speed: The Only Driver Who Can Stop Kyle Larson Is Kyle Larson

This championship is officially Kyle Larson’s to lose.

The 1.5-mile intermediate tracks had been Toyota’s bread and butter all year, and Kansas Speedway was expected to be the track where Toyota drivers and teams shined and put distance between themselves and the rest of the field. They’d be horrified to find that the exact opposite scenario played out instead, as Sunday’s (Sept. 27) Hollywood Casino 400 was a Larson onslaught from start-to-finish, as he scored the maximum 76 points, led a Kansas-record 235 laps and survived a late scare from Chase Briscoe to seal the deal on one of the most dominant performances of his career.

One month ago, Larson was riding a year-and-a-half long winless streak while Chevrolet and Hendrick Motorsports looked hopelessly lost. Larson has since opened the Chase with two wins and four consecutive top fives to put himself in the driver’s seat for a third NASCAR Cup Series championship and the chance to become the first back-to-back champion since Jimmie Johnson’s five-in-a-row streak from 2006 to 2010.

What a difference a few races can make.

Trailing in points after the first two Chase races thanks to entering The Chase as the No. 7 seed, Larson maxing out on points at Kansas gives him and the No. 5 team significant breathing room at the top of the standings for the first time. Denny Hamlin did as much as he could to minimize the damage with his 51-point, third-place day at Kansas, but he now trails Larson by 26 points after entering the weekend just a single point behind.

Everyone else is beginning to lose touch with the HendrickCars.com Chevrolet. Christopher Bell is 50 points back in third, Joey Logano is 67 points back in fourth and Ryan Blaney is 91 points back in fifth. Ty Gibbs is the last driver within double-digit points, 94 back in sixth, while Tyler Reddick, who looked to be the favorite in the first half of the year by winning five of the first nine races, has continued his fall from grace with a 111-point deficit in seventh.

Everyone outside of Hamlin will need a win to get back within striking distance of the No. 5. But if Larson is leading 235 laps at Kansas in a year where Toyota has dominated the mile-and-a-halves, it might be too little, too late. Las Vegas Motor Speedway is up next, and Larson has won there three times. Charlotte Motor Speedway is after that, and while Larson’s lone Coca-Cola 600 win came in a Gen 6 car, he’s always been a frequent contender at the front in the years since.

All of this is to say that if Larson had that good of a car at Kansas, he has the ability to make his points lead insurmountable the next two weekends. Therefore, the biggest threat to his title hopes isn’t going to be Hamlin, nor will it be Bell, Logano, Blaney, Gibbs or Reddick.

The biggest threat to Larson’s title hopes is himself.

For as great as Larson is, he is one of, if not the most mistake-prone elite driver in the Cup Series today. This year alone, he spun on his own at Chicagoland Speedway and Texas Motor Speedway, hit the wall at Darlington Raceway in the spring and wrecked in both races at EchoPark Speedway after trying to clear himself in front of another car. In all five races, he finished 32nd or worse.

Even if a bad finish is out of Larson’s control, like a blown tire in the Brickyard 400 or getting squeezed four-wide into the wall at Iowa Speedway, he always seems prone to finding trouble. Larson has nine finishes of 30th or worse in 2026, nearly a third of the season, and he has 37 finishes of 30th or worse since the Next Gen era began in 2022.

Driver	Finishes of 30th or Worse Since 2022
Kyle Larson	37
Ryan Blaney	28
Joey Logano	28
Ty Gibbs	27
Tyler Reddick	27
Christopher Bell	24
Denny Hamlin	22

A total of 37 finishes of 30th or worse since 2022 is significantly more than the six drivers chasing Larson in points, none of whom have more than 28.

We’ve already seen firsthand how painful those low finishes are when a team has a dominant car. If Blaney finished second last weekend at Bristol Motor Speedway (where he was running when he crashed), he would’ve scored 50 points. If he won, he would’ve scored 70. Instead, Blaney left Bristol with a 33rd-place finish and a paltry 19 points.

Just one mistake from Larson with a race-winning car has the potential to be the difference between a commanding lead and a miserable day that allows his competition to reenter the picture.

The No. 5 team is back in championship form and has opened the playoffs with a bang. The only question that remains is which Larson will see in the final six races: the Larson that has looked like prime Johnson the past month, or the Larson that bins it on his own while racing in the top 10?