Coming into the halfway point of the 10-race Chase to crown the 2026 NASCAR Cup Series champion, historically speaking, the storylines for Sunday’s South Point 400 (5:30 p.m. ET on USA Network, PRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) at Las Vegas Motor Speedway look very familiar to the course this Chase has already established.
The No. 1 seed entering the Chase, Joe Gibbs Racing’s Denny Hamlin is the defending race winner and has actually won the last two Las Vegas races – including from pole position last October. A win Sunday would mean Hamlin joins seven-time series champ Jimmie Johnson as the only driver to win three consecutively at the track.
That last Chase race at the Vegas 1.5-miler looks a lot like the current championship battle with Hamlin besting the day’s most dominant driver, Hendrick Motorsports’ Kyle Larson to the checkered flag and Hamlin’s JGR teammate Christopher Bell finishing third. The trio are currently ranked atop the 2026 championship standings.
Larson, a three-time Vegas winner, takes a 26-point lead over fellow three-time Las Vegas winner Hamlin into Sunday’s green flag – the largest lead atop the standings so far in the Chase. Bell is 50 points back. Team Penske teammates Joey Logano – a four-time Vegas winner – and Ryan Blaney are 67 and 91 points, respectively, behind Larson. Among the championship top-five, Bell and Blaney have never hoisted a trophy at Las Vegas.
Although the top end of the standings was relatively tight following the opening three Chase races, Larson’s two wins now in four Chase races has separated the contenders considerably. Nine positions among the 16 Chase drivers changed following Larson’s dominant win last week at Kansas Speedway.
The driver of the No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet was in the midst of a season-long winless streak before claiming wins at two of the four Chase tracks (St. Louis and Kansas) and Larson is now averaging an incredible 2.25 finish to open the Chase.
The worst finish for the two-time and reigning series champion in the last seven Las Vegas races is 11th and his 881 laps led are most in the series. Larson has six top-two finishes in 11 races driving the No. 5 Chevrolet. And it’s not just Vegas where he has been successful. His 20 stage wins in the Next Gen car at 1.5-mile tracks are almost double that of any other driver (12) and his 2,192 laps led ARE double that of any competitor. Hamlin is second with 1,020 laps led on 1.5-milers.
This weekend, Larson’s No. 5 Chevrolet will carry a paint scheme honoring the late, two-time series champion and Las Vegas native Kyle Busch, who also drove that car number for Hendrick early in his career.
“Vegas has been a good track for us in the past, and after the run we had at Kansas [Speedway], we’ve been building our intermediate program to be better and better,” Larson said. “Hopefully, we can go there, execute another good weekend, qualify well and score a lot of points.”
Hamlin, driver of the No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota, is enjoying similar success on this brand of track and certainly keeping the competition honest. He’s finished among the top-five in the last eight races on 1.5-mile tracks with an average finish during that run, a series-best 2.4.
Bell, driver of the No. 20 JGR Toyota and winner of the Chase-opener at Darlington, S.C. is a two-time runner-up at Las Vegas. He’s finished top-five in nine of the last 11 races at 1.5-mile tracks and has been top-five in the last five Las Vegas races.
Interestingly, Logano and Blaney have struggled a bit in the desert of late. Although Logano leads the series in wins at Vegas, the three-time series champ has had only a single top-10 showing with an average finish of 20.3 in the last six races at 1.5-milers. His Team Penske Ford teammate Blaney has an average finish of 30th in the last four Las Vegas races. He has only four top-10 finishes in the last nine 1.5-mile races, however, those four top-10s have come in the last four races.
There are plenty of other former Las Vegas winners with varying motivations this week, including Chase driver, Hendrick’s William Byron (2023), who has earned top-10 finishes at all six 1.5-mile tracks this season.
Wood Brothers Racing driver Josh Berry claimed his first career NASCAR Cup Series win here in 2025 and would love another in his final year with the legendary team before moving to Legacy Motor Club. Hendrick’s Alex Bowman is a former winner (2022) and would love to score another trophy after announcing next year he is stepping away from fulltime competition.
Former series champion Brad Keselowski – a three-time Las Vegas winner and owner-driver of the No. 6 Roush Fenway Keselowski Ford, announced this week stunning news that he will not be back at RFK next season. A press conference with the team is scheduled for Saturday.
Six different drivers have hoisted the trophy in the six races at 1.5-mile tracks this year. Byron’s average finish of 6.3 in that span is second to Hamlin with 23XI Racing’s Bubba Wallace (10.0), Hendrick’s Chase Elliott (11.2), 23XI Racing’s Tyler Reddick and Blaney next best (11.5).
Good news for the weekend, the weather looks to be as promising as the sport has experienced in the last few weeks, with forecasts calling for low 90-degree marks and plenty of sun.
Qualifying has traditionally been a strong sign of performance at Las Vegas with five of the last seven races won from a front row starting position. And interestingly, the race winner has swept both Stage 1 and Stage 2 five times – most of any track.
Practice is scheduled for 4:30 p.m. ET on Saturday followed by Busch Light Pole Qualifying at 5:35 p.m. ET – both sessions broadcast on TruTV, PRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.
— NASCAR News Wire —