5 Points to Ponder: Should We Just Give Kyle Larson the NASCAR Cup Series Championship Now?

1. Kyle Larson Will Have to Beat Himself to Lose the Championship

It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

The definition of “this” is multiple choice. One option is more general: that the revised and reborn Chase for the Championship was supposed to provide a 10-race battle for the title that could produce drama to the very end without relying on an elimination format.

If you prefer a more specific possibility, it’s that Kyle Larson, who not that long ago was mired in an unthinkably long winless streak, never figured to be a prohibitive favorite to win the 2026 NASCAR Cup Series title.

Yet here we are, only halfway through The Chase, and while he and his No. 5 team would certainly say publicly there’s a long way to go, it feels like he’ll be nearly impossible to catch.

The most recent race at Las Vegas only added to that feeling. Larson’s car started off much worse than you’d expect from a team that had won two of the previous three races. He even fell a lap down at one point.

But he rallied to finish second, which is a testament to both his team’s ability to bounce back and how tough it will be for even perennial bridesmaid Denny Hamlin to beat him for the season-long crown.

Larson has been superb since the start of The Chase, as his worst postseason finish to date has been fifth. And yes, he had a stretch almost as good in late May through the end of June, but until the fall race at Darlington, his 2026 could best be described as disappointing.

As Shakespeare once said, there’s the rub. One of the big complaints about the NASCAR playoffs was that a driver could be just OK, turn it on in the last 10 races, and end up the champ.

At least there was drama to the very end, however. What we’re facing now is potentially worse, as Larson could win it all by being decent for 26 races, amazing for five, then just pretty good for five more. The only way he figures to be in real danger is if he suffers multiple wrecks or equipment failures, and who wants those to be the deciding factor?

It’s too early in the Chase 2.0 era to overreact, but it’s hard to shake the feeling we could be headed for a “worst of both worlds” scenario in year one.

2. Remember When the Next Gen Car Made Intermediates Glorious?

In contrast, it isn’t too soon to render a verdict on the Next Gen car, seeing as it’s wrapping up its fifth year of Cup Series competition. The early verdict was that it made racing at short tracks and road courses slightly worse, didn’t affect things much in either direction at drafting tracks, but improved the product on 1.5-mile circuits.

The timing of that tradeoff stank since NASCAR had just leaned into more short tracks and road courses, but it worked out OK since there were so many intermediates on the schedule. Of course, that only remained acceptable as long as the racing stayed great where the Next Gen supposedly shined, and there are signs that is no longer the case.

NASCAR would likely point to the number of passes and the comers and goers throughout the field as assurance that nothing is amiss. I don’t have the data to argue against that, but the place where intermediate racing no longer passes the eye test is where it’s most important: at the very front of the field.

As the most recent Las Vegas race showed, it’s possible to have the best car at an intermediate track right this second and make your way to the back bumper of the leader. Passing them is a different matter, and until that gets fixed, we’re going to leave these races feeling empty inside.

The usual suspects will be proposed as fixes. One is more horsepower, and it’s the remedy NASCAR appears to want to avoid at all costs. Maybe more drudgery at the tracks that felt most promising just a few years ago will change that mindset.

3. No. 1 Seed Hasn’t Meant Much in The Chase

Never let it be said that this column can’t be used to admit when a writer is wrong. I thought that the honor formerly known as the regular season championship, now known by the much less interesting title of No. 1 seed in The Chase, would be a big advantage once the postseason began.

It hasn’t worked out that way at all. Hamlin is 40 points back, and as we’ve already discussed, may need misfortune to befall the driver ahead of him to have any shot at being champion. The other two national NASCAR series are no different, as both Justin Allgaier (30 points back in the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series) and Layne Riggs (37 in the Truck Series) face uphill battles over the next five races.

This is the part of The Chase that is the most unfair when compared to a full season points system. All three drivers had points leads bigger than the ones they received after the resets. Much has been made about the perceived injustice to Hamlin, but Allgaier’s lead was more than double and he’s now desperately trying to hunt down leader Sheldon Creed with two drivers in-between them.

At least in the playoffs, a driver in a similar situation could win a race and put themselves right back in the hunt. For this trio, it’s going to take a surge down the stretch and perhaps some bad luck to the people ahead of them to still have a shot when they roll into Miami.

4. Chase Briscoe Is Having a Strange Season

I’m fond of making references from literature and pop culture to make my points, but it’s a snippet from the Bible that sums up how I view Chase Briscoe and his 2026 campaign: to whom much is given, much will be required (h/t Luke).

By most drivers’ standards, this has been a successful year for Briscoe and his No. 19 team. His Vegas victory was his second of the season, and he’s kind of, sort of in the hunt for the championship, down 84 points with five races remaining.

Yet after visiting victory lane, Briscoe didn’t exactly sound triumphant, saying that while it hasn’t been a tough year, it was “just not the results we necessarily want.”

He didn’t clarify exactly what he meant by that. Briscoe had three wins in 2025, a total that is still within reach with five races left. He finished third in the final standings, and it’s possible he ends up there again.

It says something about expectations at Joe Gibbs Racing that a repeat of the previous season isn’t good enough. Briscoe wants to be winning more, and probably nabbing a championship too.

Still, there’s a difference between having competitive fire and watching it burn too brightly to appreciate the successes one does achieve. Here’s hoping that Briscoe is able to find the balance between pushing for more without letting the pressure eat at him so much that he can’t enjoy what he’s accomplished.

5. Pour One Out for the ROVAL

It’s back to Charlotte this coming weekend for the next stop in The Chase, and for the first time since 2017, that means a second trip to the oval instead of the ROVAL.

Despite its pretentious capitalization, the ROVAL was one of the more fun experiments of the last decade of NASCAR history, and produced more than its fair share of chaos and fun finishes. It arrived at just the right time, when more road courses were the in thing, and left the schedule as the pendulum began swinging the other way.

Anyone who thinks fans never enjoyed ROVAL racing is engaging in a bit of revisionist history. Four of the races there earned ratings of 83% or higher in Jeff Gluck’s “Was it a good race?” poll, though it must be noted that all of them were before the Next Gen car.

So maybe it was a combination of the current car stinking things up and the gimmick running its course that meant the ROVAL’s time was up. I’ll still think back upon it fondly while watching all left turns this weekend, stuck with a nagging feeling that there should be more.