NASCAR has been chasing the ghost of the 1992 Winston Cup season finale for 34 years, and while there are still three races to go, this appears to be the closest it has gotten short of outright manufacturing it.
In the aftermath of a consequential race on Sunday at Phoenix Raceway, there are seven drivers within one race, and next up is the wildest of wild cars at Talladega Superspeedway.
Kyle Larson
Christopher Bell -5
Chase Briscoe -24
Denny Hamlin -31
Ryan Blaney -40
Joey Logano -44
Tyler Reddick -56
As was always going to be the case, this championship will be majorly decided by who does or doesn’t get involved in The Big One next weekend, but also who is going to win each of these next three races.
“One win and you’re right there,” said Denny Hamlin after the race and that applies to literally everyone listed above.
Kyle Larson entered this race with a 49-point championship advantage but coughed practically all of it away with a car that simply wasn’t good all weekend. He foreshadowed it too, saying ‘I suck’ at Phoenix Raceway and struggled to even race inside of the top-25.
The Hendrick Motorsports No. 5 was unable to score a single stage point and eventually suffered a tire failure that sent him into the wall and out of the race.
Kyle Larson, Hendrick Motorsports
Photo by: Meg Oliphant / Getty Images
“We’re not good here,” Larson said outside of the infield care center. “It was a tough day. We just weren’t good.”
Meanwhile, Hamlin was presented with a real opportunity to regain the championship lead and scored 12 stage points. Then he suffered a tire failure running fourth and was unable to get back on the lead lap, finishing 28th.
And really, it was a missed opportunity for all of Larson’s other closest pursuers too, as Tyler Reddick went onto win the race but is still something of a championship long shot without a lot of help.
With a win, any combination of Joey Logano, Christopher Bell or Chase Briscoe could have taken the points lead with three races to go, but ultimately couldn’t close out on chances to do just that.
Logano won both of the stages, scoring 20 points, but could only finish sixth with a slight ‘hiccup’ on pit road.
“It was good and bad, I guess,” Logano said. “The good part is that we were fast and led a bunch of laps and won two stages. The bad part is we gave away a win. That part hurts a little bit, but I guess we made up close to 50 points to the leader, so you can’t be too mad about it. I wish we had it back.”
There was a lot of that going around.
Even Bell, who is as close to the championship lead as he has been all year, looked a little aggravated after finishing fourth.
“It's going to be a battle, that's for sure,” Bell said. “We're right there in it. Really proud of our team. They've been doing a really good job of bringing fast race cars, executing races. We've been able to qualify well and run up front in stages.
“I felt like our performance probably tapered off a little bit as the day went on. We had the strategy to put tires there at the end, had good restarts to get some track position. We're in the hunt.”
Meanwhile, Hamlin is as close to a defeated man as possible after suffering misfortune or mistakes in five of the first seven races as the number one seeded contender. It’s actually quite remarkable that he is only 31 back given everything that’s happened.
A lot of that is a testament to his regular season and the 25-point advantage that he started the Chase for the Championship with. He gained 18 points on Larson.
“That doesn’t matter because it’s about our day, and not anyone elses day,” Hamlin said. “We have not finished races to the best of our ability. If we can start doing that in a hurry, you never know what could happen.”
But this was supposed to be his year, again, something he has been fond of saying a lot in recent years regarding that elusive championship.
"Some things are meant to be and some things are not meant to be," Hamlin said. "I think there are so many cards that have been dealt to me in these playoffs and the Chase, I've seen it all, so nothing surprises me.
"Nothing surprises me. I'm not shell shocked because I've been here before."
Denny Hamlin, Joe Gibbs Racing
Photo by: Meg Oliphant / Getty Images
All told, this is what NASCAR has been trying to replicate since 1992 when Alan Kulwicki won the championship in a finale that still had five other mathematical contenders in Bill Elliott, Davey Allison, Harry Gant, Kyle Petty and Mark Martin.
The first year of the original Chase featured a similar dynamic as Kurt Busch clinched in a race that still featured mathematical probabilities for Jimmie Johnson, Jeff Gordon, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Martin.
The 2011 finale saw Tony Stewart defeat Carl Edwards via a tiebreaker, which then led to NASCAR forcing a four-driver finale every year from 2014 to 2025. NASCAR did learn some lessons from that format, like the emphasis on wins and rewarding race long performance through stages, and each of those elements have improved this version of The Chase.
Ultimately, with three races left to go, anyone in the top seven can win this championship is in it if they can avoid the Talladega Big One and get to Victory Lane.
Imagine if Briscoe had been able to close out against Larson at Kansas. He’d be leading now.
“That’s part of it, it’s racing,” Briscoe said.
At 40 and 44 out, with three really good tracks left, don’t count out the Team Penske champions either.
“It feels a lot better than 80,” Blaney said. “That’s definitely doable, for sure, and we just have to keep doing what we’re doing. I feel like when we finish these races we’ve run really well. Outside of St. Louis and Bristol, we’ve put together a really good Chase with really fast cars running up towards the front.
“It makes me feel better leaving here better than 78 back or way over, so we’ve just got to keep working.”
Ditto Logano.
“We’re more optimistic than we were coming in, so I kind of thought if we can be 60 out, we’ll probably be in decent shape and I think we’re 40-something out, so, overall, it was a solid day.”
Larson never expected to run away with this championship regardless so this is as it was always going to be.
“I didn’t expect to run well here off of history,” Larson said. “Obviously, I wanted to finish to get whatever points we could. Our day was not going to be great so now we need to go execute and our plan hasn’t changed at all.”