Talladega Superspeedway (Talladega, Ala.) – Kyle Larson had never won a superspeedway draft race, and when he fell to 11th in the final lap on Sunday, it looked like the streak would end at 59 races.
Instead, the generation ended. And now the Cup championship is firmly in his hands.
Larson’s remarkable comeback put him 73 points ahead of Denny Hamlin, 74 points ahead of Christopher Bell and 79 points ahead of Chase Briscoe with two races left in the season.
If he leaves Martinsville 77 points ahead of the entire field, he will clinch the title a week before the season ends Nov. 8 at Homestead.
His initial reaction when he saw the dots?
“Holy sh–,” Larson said at his winning press conference.
That was the reaction many people had after seeing Larson win at Talladega.
Here are my suggestions:
1. Kyle Larson in control
An excited Kyle Larson won at Talladega and now controls his own destiny in The Chase.
Larson nearly lost control of the win and the points lead.
He said that, as he made the winning pass, his hands came off the wheel from his excitement. He almost had his wheels on the left side below the yellow line that separates the apron from the racing surface, which would have been a penalty.
NASCAR decided that its wheels never went completely under the line.
The fact that he was in that position was outrageous. Holes appeared to open up for Larson, who also had help from his Chevrolet brethren for most of the race.
NASCAR said all Chevrolets were bogged down in the final two turns and they did not believe any driver gave up a position to help Larson.
“I felt like Dale (Earnhardt) Jr. out there with half the field helping me,” Larson said in his USA Sports interview after the race.
With that kind of last-lap control, the championship is now firmly in his grasp. Larson is seeking his third title, having won in 2021 and then again in 2025.
“There’s still a lot of racing left,” Larson said. “So many (races) in The Chase… I’m not going to let you guys get ahead of me.”
Nine drivers were eliminated from the championship race: Austin Cindric, Ty Gibbs, Chase Elliott, Carson Hocevar, Bubba Wallace, Daniel Suarez, William Byron, Chris Buescher and Ryan Preece.
2. Large ruins wipe out contenders
Large wrecks ended several days of Chase contenders, including No. 22 Joey Logano as he battled for the win.
Wrecks wiped out five of the seven drivers in contention for The Chase.
Christopher Bell self-destructed, spinning as he entered the pit. Ryan Blaney and Tyler Reddick were caught in the first major crash. Joey Logano and Chase Briscoe were caught in the second major crash, with Logano ends up upside down on his roof.
They all remained mathematically in contention for the title, but none are as close to Larson.
“I just have to win,” Briscoe told me outside the medical center when he didn’t know the exact amount of points he was behind.
Blaney, speaking after the crash, summed up his championship chances by saying, “it’s on life support, that’s for sure.”
3. More disappointment Hamlin
Denny Hamlin’s regular season success has not translated into the postseason.
Regular season champion Denny Hamlin would have been satisfied with an eighth-place finish at Talladega — except Larson’s win dashed his hopes of keeping the pace.
Hamlin did not score any points in the stage (Larson won 16 of a possible 20) but was in the top 10 for most of the time near the end of the race.
“Obviously, (Larson’s) (No.) 5 is on a massive run at the right time of year,” Hamlin told me and other reporters after the race. “And that’s what we have. It’s disappointing, but our day could have been a—ton worse.
“We didn’t get a point.
4. RFK Snookers Field In Stage One
RFK’s teammates snookered the field in Phase 1.
NASCAR has worked to keep teams from having their drivers race at 50-60 percent throttle to save fuel on high-speed roads. The idea is that by doing this, their stops before the end of the stage or race can be shorter because they will need less fuel to get to the end.
One of the changes was a longer first stage, which at Talladega was 98 laps. It started with drivers saving fuel.
But after 30 laps, the RFK Racing drivers went full speed and quickly built a 20-second lead over the rest of the field and eventually it was more than 40 seconds. Chris Buescher, Ryan Preece and Brad Keselowski easily went 1-2-3 in the stage.
“When everyone else is running at 40 percent throttle, it’s possible,” Preece told me and other reporters after the race. “I don’t want to talk too much about him, except you’ll never see him again.
“You’re going to see every team in this garage react and you’re not going to let that happen again. That was pretty cool. I hope you enjoyed it.”
4 ½. What’s next: Martinsville
Next up … Martinsville.
Martinsville Speedway, the shortest track on the NASCAR circuit at 0.526 miles, will serve as the penultimate race of the 2026 season.
Chase Elliott won there in the spring and William Byron won there the year before. Both have been eliminated from the Chase race.
In nine Next Generation races at Martinsville, Larson has one win, two seconds, one third and two fifths. He was ninth in the spring.
WHAT YOU SHOULD READ NEXT
It was a scary scene for Joey Logano at Talladega after a crash left him upside down on the track.
