Kyle Larson has transformed the 2026 NASCAR championship fight in only five races. He entered the Chase 55 points behind Denny Hamlin and reached the halfway mark 40 points ahead, producing a 95-point swing that moved the defending champion from seventh in the reset standings to the top of the table.
Larson finished fifth at Darlington, won at Gateway, placed second at Bristol, won again at Kansas, and followed with another runner-up at Las Vegas. That run gives him a 2.2 average finish, the best opening five-race Chase average since NASCAR introduced the format in 2004. He also scored 273 points, more than any driver has in any five-race stretch this season.
But that doesn’t mean the remaining schedule suggests his advantage is completely secure. Charlotte and Talladega are two of the five tracks where Larson has accumulated his most career finishes of 30th or worse, and both appear in the championship’s final five races.
The No. 5 team’s strongest weapon may be its ability to rescue points when a race starts to go wrong. Las Vegas was the most recent and clearest example. Larson struggled early, dropped a lap after a 26-second green-flag pit stop for major adjustments, and needed a wave-around to recover. He eventually moved to second and protected his championship position on the day that initially threatened a major loss.
The Hendrick Motorsports driver has encountered problems during the Chase, but Cliff Daniels and the No. 5 crew have repeatedly limited the points damage.
Meanwhile, Hamlin now needs to average eight points per race at Charlotte, Phoenix, Talladega, Martinsville, and Homestead to erase the 40-point deficit. If, by any chance, both drivers finish the season level, NASCAR would apply its championship tiebreaker.
Christopher Bell remains 55 points behind Larson, while Joey Logano sits 71 points back, so Hamlin isn’t the only remaining threat.
Charlotte and Talladega Could Give Kyle Larson’s Rivals an Opening
Charlotte will be the first danger for the No. 5 team. Larson has made 16 Cup starts on the oval and owns one victory, but he’s also finished 30th or worse five times.
His Next Gen results show that inconsistency precisely. He finished P9 in 2022, 30th in 2023, missed a start in 2024 because Indianapolis weather delayed his Indy 500 attempt, finished 37th after a crash in 2025, and finished P5 in this May’s Coca-Cola 600.
Sunday will also bring an unfamiliar competitive setting because NASCAR will use Charlotte’s oval for the fall Cup race for the first time since 2017. That will remove much of the recent fall-event reference data teams collected during the Roval era and place greater importance on what they learned during May’s 600.
Then again, next race at Talladega will present a different type of risk. Larson has seven DNFs across 23 career starts there and an average finish of 22.0. He finished fourth in fall 2024 and second in spring 2025, slipped to 26th later that year and crashed out in 40th this April.
Not to mention, Hamlin possesses enough strength on the remaining schedule to make any Larson setback expensive. He owns 14 combined wins across those five tracks, including six at Martinsville, three at Homestead, two apiece at Phoenix and Talladega, and one at Charlotte.
His 2026 results speak to his current speed at several of them, with a fifth at Phoenix, a second at Martinsville, and a third at Charlotte. He finished 15th at Talladega.
Still, Larson holds the strongest position at the halfway mark. Its championship model raised his title probability from 11.9 percent before the Chase to 46.3 percent after Las Vegas, while Hamlin holds 32.5 percent.
The HMS driver needs to keep collecting stage points and protect his finish at Charlotte, where he has had both a win and several disastrous results. Hamlin needs to start cutting away at the gap before Talladega adds even more uncertainty three races from the finale.