Hey, do you remember this time last week when I said we had ourselves a Chase again after Phoenix Raceway? Yeah … never mind.
Kyle Larson triumphed on the high banks of Talladega Superspeedway for his first career NASCAR Cup Series win at a drafting track and the 35th overall of his career. Meanwhile, the six other Chase contenders within 56 points of Larson all experienced some sort of trouble, with all but one of them finishing outside the top 30.
What are some of the most notable numbers coming out of Talladega? Is there any chance Larson could falter in the last two races, or can NASCAR basically start engraving the trophy? We’ll attempt to answer these questions on this week’s edition of Stat Sheet.
68: Points Kyle Larson Gained on His Lead
At Phoenix, Larson lost 44 points on his lead after a disastrous 34th-place finish, arriving in Alabama clinging to a five-point advantage over Christopher Bell.
What a difference a week makes. Larson not only won the race, but he also accrued 16 stage points with a fourth-place showing in stage one and coming in runner-up in stage two, collecting a resounding 71 of a possible 76 points. Between that and all of his close contenders battling adversity, Larson gained a whopping 68 points on his lead, leaving Talladega up 73 points on Denny Hamlin.
As an additional cherry on top for Chevrolet, Larson’s win was part of a clean sweep of the top six for the manufacturer.
Talladega continued the pattern of significant points swings in this new rendition of The Chase. The six drivers closest to Larson in The Chase standings lost on average 59.8 points to the driver of the No. 5 compared to where they were a week earlier.
23.5: Average Finish For Joe Gibbs Racing
You may have noticed three different JGR drivers on that previous chart. For the top team of the manufacturer that has largely dominated the 2026 season, Sunday’s race was an unmitigated disaster for its three drivers who entered Talladega with a reasonable championship shot.
Hamlin and the No. 11 team fared the best of the JGR trio, overcoming damage sustained in an earlier wreck to finish ninth. But here’s the big problem for Hamlin: no stage points. So even with a top-10 finish, he only got 29 points to Larson’s 71.
Chase Briscoe, despite starting on the pole, plummeted to 33rd in the finishing order after getting swept in The Big One with five laps to go. The saving grace for the No. 19 team was that they collected 12 stage points to somewhat cushion the blow, but Briscoe still finds himself 79 markers back of Larson.
Out of JGR’s three drivers within reasonable striking distance of Larson before Talladega, Bell definitely had the worst day. On his way to pit road for a green-flag pit stop during stage one, Bell spun out and hit the inside wall just before the pit entrance. Though the No. 20 was able to continue, the car sustained damage that kept it from competing for the win and earning any stage points, instead winding up 35th with just three total points. Bell now sits third in the standings, 74 behind Larson.
Add in a middle-of-the-road 17th-place finish for Ty Gibbs, and JGR collectively had an average finish of 23.5 at perhaps the worst possible time for its championship hopes. Though still mathematically alive, Hamlin, Briscoe and Bell will need flawless runs at Martinsville Speedway and Homestead-Miami Speedway, and they will need Larson to falter considerably like he did at Phoenix.
3.5: Average Talladega Finish for Carson Hocevar in 2026
Meanwhile, a new superspeedway master may be in the works.
Carson Hocevar dodged all the chaos at Talladega on Sunday, backing up his win in the spring race by finishing sixth. For the year, that is a 3.5 average finish at the 2.66-mile track for driver No. 77. Furthermore, across seven total starts at Talladega, Hocevar has four top-10 finishes and an average finish of 12.1 that tops all active drivers.
Hocevar’s prowess on the drafting tracks is not limited to The Yellowhammer State. At EchoPark Speedway, Hocevar has posted three top fives and four top 10s across six starts for an average finish of ninth. On the other hand, Daytona International Speedway has yet to be kind to Hocevar, with no top 10s and an average finish of 28.5.
The superspeedway tracks appear to mesh well with Hocevar’s aggressive driving style, and I anticipate him being a consistent contender at those three tracks for a ways to come.
5: Career Cup Top-Five Finishes for Cole Custer
Just behind Larson’s third victory in the past seven races, another driver in the Chevrolet stable quietly had one of his best finishes in a long while.
The past couple of seasons have been a struggle for Cole Custer and the No. 41 Haas Factory Team, all that remains of the former Stewart-Haas Racing. Custer sits 32nd in the Cup Series standings, ahead of only Ty Dillon, Connor Zilisch and Cody Ware among full-time drivers.
At Talladega though, things broke the No. 41’s way to the tune of a fifth-place finish. For Custer, it is his first top five of the season and his first since this same Talladega race last year.
Custer owns just five top fives across his 187 career Cup starts. Of those five, three of them have come at drafting tracks. The two exceptions are a back-to-back stretch when he placed fifth in the 2020 Brickyard 400, followed by his lone career Cup win at Kentucky Speedway the next race.
2001: The Last Time a Non-Cup Driver Won in the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts and Craftsman Truck Series in the Same Weekend
We were almost witnesses to a trifecta at Talladega this past weekend.
Sammy Smith began the weekend’s racing by piloting the No. 7 Spire Motorsports Chevrolet to the win in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race on Friday (Oct. 23). The next day, in his full-time ride in the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series, Smith returned the No. 8 to Talladega victory lane by holding off Carson Kvapil for the win.
After his Saturday win, I was rooting for someone to somehow give Smith a Cup ride for a chance at the tripleheader sweep. Unfortunately, it was not meant to be.
However, it was still a great weekend for Smith, who became the first non-Cup driver to sweep the NOAPS and Truck races in a weekend since the late Greg Biffle did it at Phoenix in 2001.
Andrew Stoddard joined Frontstretch in May of 2022 and is currently an editor and a weekly writer of Stat Sheet. He is a graduate of Hampden-Sydney College, the University of Richmond, and VCU. He works as an athletic communications specialist at Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg, Va.
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