For the first time this season, Kyle Larson heads to Kansas Speedway with two specific distinctions.
The driver of the No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet is both a 2026 race winner and the leader of the NASCAR Cup Series Chase presented by Mobil.
The two-time and defending series champion is the only driver to have scored top-five finishes in each of the first three Chase races—fifth at Darlington Raceway, first at World Wide Technology Raceway and second (in a photo finish with Carson Hocevar) last Saturday at Bristol Motor Speedway.
Those results add up to a one-point lead over Denny Hamlin, the top seed entering the Chase, which resumes with Sunday’s Hollywood Casino 400 at Kansas Speedway (3 p.m. ET on USA, MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
For Larson, however, the advance to the top of the standings represents a 56-point swing from the start of postseason. Before he won at WWT Raceway, ending a 51-race drought, Larson’s most recent victory came at Kansas in the 12th race of 2025.
Larson (three wins) and 2026 spring winner Tyler Reddick (two wins) are the only drivers with multiple victories in the last 12 races at the track.
The race at Kansas Speedway is the first of three straight Chase events on 1.5-mile intermediate speedways, a stretch that could be pivotal in determining the eventual champion.
“We’re going to some good tracks for us but also good tracks for the Toyotas are Vegas and Kansas, Charlotte,” Larson said after leading 45 laps and scoring 47 points at Bristol.
“It could easily change a lot here in the next upcoming weeks. But we’ve just got to be ready for anything and keep plugging away.”
Chase Briscoe, driver of the No. 19 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota, sees the races at Kansas, Charlotte and Las Vegas as critical to the title chances of the Camry drivers.
“The next three weeks are really great opportunities for us,” said Briscoe, who is ninth in the Chase standings, 87 points behind Larson. “If history repeats itself, that’s where we’ve had the advantage all season long.
“So, hopefully, we can use that to our advantage and gain a lot of valuable points. That’s going to be one of those things where, if you don’t maximize those three weeks, as a Toyota (driver), you’re just going to be kicking yourself, because that’s where we’ve had the advantage all year.”
Briscoe is the most recent winner on a 1.5-mile downforce track, having triumphed at Chicagoland Speedway on July 5.
Ford drivers have won four of the last six Cup Series races, with Team Penske’s Joey Logano taking the checkered flag at Bristol. Coincidentally, the three-time series champion is the last Ford driver to win on a traditional 1.5-mile track, a feat he accomplished at Texas Motor Speedway in May of 2025.
Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet driver Chase Elliott is the defending winner of the fall race at Kansas, having snookered a gang of Toyota drivers on the final lap of overtime last year.
When the race goes green on Sunday, Ryan Blaney and Carson Hocevar—protagonists in a late accident at Bristol and the fistfight that followed—will be subjects of intense scrutiny. The wreck, which sidelined Blaney in 33rd place, cost the driver of the No. 12 Ford a chance to gain on the Chase frontrunners.
Blaney currently is sixth in the standings, 52 points out of the lead.
Hocevar, on the other hand, is eighth in the standings after his third-place run at Thunder Valley. He trails Larson by 85 points and is focused on Kansas as an opportunity to climb higher.
“I’m looking forward to it,” Hocevar said. “We led some laps last year, and we are improving at Kansas. We’ve been fast at the 1.5-mile tracks, but it seems like that is the one place we don’t have the results to really show it.
“I enjoy Kansas. You get to move around and run the top for a while, which I enjoy. The fall race tends to have more variation, as it is either super-hot or it cools down, which changes the track quite a bit.”
Hocevar led twice for six laps in the spring before finishing 13th, his best result at the track.
Trailing in the standings for the first time since he assumed the lead at Sonoma Raceway in late June, Hamlin is looking for a return to form after finishes of 18th, ninth and eighth in the first three Chase races.
The driver of the No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota has four Kansas victories, the most recent in 2023, and has finished fifth or better in eight of the last 10 races there.
— NASCAR Wire Service —