Now there are three.
After a chaotic short track Sunday afternoon at Martinsville Speedway, only Kyle Larson, Christopher Bell and Denny Hamlin remain eligible to decide the 2026 NASCAR Cup Series championship.
And for Bell and Hamlin, the road to the Bill France Cup just became considerably steeper, thanks to another Chase race in which Larson managed to do very Larson things: have a thoroughly miserable afternoon, recover from it and somehow leave with most of his championship advantage intact.
While William Byron was busy treating Martinsville like his personal playground, the three championship contenders were dealing with varying degrees of frustration. For Larson and Hamlin, it was a case of a strategy gamble going spectacularly wrong. Bell, meanwhile, discovered that sometimes a car can look considerably better on paper than it feels from behind the steering wheel.
The trouble started in Stage 1. While much of the field elected to pit around the halfway point of the 130-lap stage, Hamlin and Larson were among seven drivers who decided to stay out and run the stage to its conclusion.
Ryan Preece briefly made the strategy look brilliant, taking the lead on Lap 84 and building a cushion of approximately seven seconds. Unfortunately, the rest of the field had fresher tires, and that tends to be rather useful when you’re trying to make a race car go around Martinsville fast.
Byron eventually swept past Preece with five laps remaining to win the stage. Preece managed to hang on for third, but Hamlin and Chase Briscoe finished 17th and 21st, respectively. Larson had an even worse time of it, finishing 23rd, going a lap down and missing the opportunity for the free pass.
For a championship leader who had arrived at Martinsville with an opportunity to put the title away a week early, it was hardly ideal.
Larson, however, has made a habit of turning bad afternoons into relatively good ones during this Chase. Much like his recovery at Las Vegas earlier in the playoffs, he slowly worked his way back into contention, eventually getting his lap back and salvaging a ninth-place finish.
Hamlin and Bell had their own problems to deal with. On Lap 215, while racing three-wide for 12th, Joey Logano got into Bell, who then got into Logano. The resulting chain reaction sent both Bell and Hamlin spinning. Neither driver was eliminated, and both managed to recover and continue, but it was another unwanted complication in an afternoon that had already gone sideways for Joe Gibbs Racing.
Hamlin eventually worked his way back to sixth, while Bell salvaged a 10th-place finish.
Larson admitted afterward that the strategy decision was largely influenced by what Hamlin was doing.
“Yeah, we were just on the wrong side of the strategy,” Larson said. “I think kind of just playing off Denny, probably mostly Denny, but I’m sure the 19 as well.”
The No. 5 Chevrolet driver also acknowledged that the afternoon could have been considerably worse. Despite missing out on valuable stage points and spending time a lap down, he leaves Martinsville with a 67-point advantage over Bell and 70 over Hamlin.
“I’m surprised that it’s that good,” Larson said. “I’m happy, but I’m also bummed because there’s a lot of opportunities there in the stages.”
Larson knows the championship isn’t officially his just yet, and he’s not particularly interested in tempting fate.
“There’s always concern when it’s not clinched,” he said. “I absolutely will feel some pressure this week. I know it’s a large gap. Crazy things can happen.”
His plan for Homestead is fairly straightforward: get off to a better start, collect some stage points and then take care of business in the final stage.
“We’d love to get a couple good first stages, then pound it in the third stage,” Larson said.
For Hamlin, the Martinsville afternoon was another opportunity lost. The Joe Gibbs Racing driver had hoped to take advantage of Larson’s difficulties and make a serious dent in the championship deficit. Instead, his own strategy gamble left him fighting to recover lost track position.
“Just really came down to Stage 1 with us running the no-stop strategy,” Hamlin explained. “Lost all of our track position there. When we got to the back, then you got all those incidents, the cautions, then obviously the 22 got the 20, and the 20 got into us.”
Hamlin was referring to the chain of incidents involving Logano and Bell that contributed to his problems. Once the track position disappeared, getting it back proved difficult.
“Nobody else did,” Hamlin said of the challenge of driving back through the field. “Obviously got some decent damage there.”
And while Larson also struggled, Hamlin failed to benefit from the opportunity.
“Obviously didn’t capitalize today on Larson not getting any stage points and stuff like that,” Hamlin said. “The first stage was the killer for us that set us back.”
Hamlin isn’t ready to throw in the towel, though. He believes his team can still contend for the win at Homestead, even if the championship math is beginning to look like something requiring an advanced degree.
“I feel confident that I’ll be able to go there and contend,” Hamlin said. “I’d love to get another win before the end of the year. I thought it was going to come today.”
Christopher Bell, meanwhile, leaves Martinsville in second place in the standings, but with a considerable amount of work ahead of him.
The No. 20 Toyota driver benefited from his team’s decision to pit during Stage 1, gaining valuable track position while others stayed out. But as the race progressed, Bell discovered his car wasn’t quite as competitive as he initially believed.
“I think at least myself, I got tricked into thinking I was better than I was,” Bell admitted.
His crew chief, Adam Stevens, made what Bell considered a good strategic call, but the car simply couldn’t maintain the pace over longer runs.
“On the Stage 2 start, I felt like I was pretty good,” Bell said. “Adam came on the radio and said that William was running part throttle. I’m at 100%, he’s at 80%. I don’t know, just I was pretty close on the short run, then the long run I fell off.”
Bell ultimately finished 10th, a result that left him 67 points behind Larson with one race remaining.
For all three drivers, the final stop is Homestead-Miami Speedway, where Larson will arrive with a substantial advantage and two challengers who need something considerably more dramatic than an ordinary Sunday afternoon.
Bell isn’t particularly interested in treating it like anything other than another race.
“It’s just another race, another opportunity to fight for a win,” he said.
That may be the sensible approach. But with 67 points separating him from Larson, winning is probably going to be the minimum requirement for Bell to have any realistic championship hopes.
Hamlin faces an even larger deficit, 70 points, and knows his team needs to deliver something special.
Larson, meanwhile, has one hand on the trophy, although he knows better than to start polishing it just yet.
After all, NASCAR has a long history of finding creative ways to make a perfectly comfortable championship situation considerably less comfortable. And Larson has one more Sunday to get through before he can officially call himself champion.
Greg was a writer for DriveTribe supporting Amazon's The Grand Tour and has been published in major publications across the country including the Los Angeles Times, the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He was also a contributor to Chicken Soup for the NASCAR Soul, published in 2010, and the Christmas edition in 2016. He wrote as the NASCAR, Formula 1, Auto Reviews and National Veterans Affairs Examiner for Examiner.com and has appeared on Fox News. He holds a BS degree in communications, and a Masters degree in psychology. He is currently the weekend Motorsports Editor for Autoweek and a regular contributor to Forbes.
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