It was plenty dramatic yet ultimately status quo. Hendrick Motorsports driver Kyle Larson strapped into his No. 5 Chevrolet for Sunday’s Xfinity 500 at Martinsville (Va.) Speedway hoping to ensure a championship “clinch” at next week’s season finale, simply a formality.
But it took 500 laps of hard-nosed and often hard-luck racing on the .524-mile Virginia short track to set that stage for next Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series Championship Race at Homestead-Miami Speedway. Larson who took a 73-point advantage to the Martinsville green flag and now holds a 67-point advantage over Joe Gibbs Racing driver Christopher Bell and a 70-point gap on Bell’s JGR teammate Denny Hamlin heading to Florida.
The trio had an action-packed afternoon at the historic half-miler running up front early – Hamlin won pole position. They all were forced to overcome challenging circumstances mid-race before putting together a final run that technically keeps the title Chase up for grabs. Hamlin finished sixth at Martinsville with Larson and Bell finishing ninth and 10th.
There are 76 points available in a single race. The two-time and reigning series champion Larson needs only nine points now to put the title out of reach for either of the other drivers. And …. Larson arrives in the Sunshine State the defending Homestead race winner, taking his second trophy at the track in the 2025 race, last March.
Asked about the Homestead scenario following the Martinsville race, the driver of the No. 20 JGR Toyota Bell smiled, conceding it would take extraordinary circumstances to prevail with such a points deficit.
“It’s just another race, another opportunity to fight for a win,” the 2023 Homestead race winner said. “I think we know [of the challenge].”
Hamlin, a three-time Homestead winner, did not overtly concede anything either despite the large points disadvantage he faces.
“I feel confident that I’ll be able to go there and contend,” the driver of the No. 11 JGR Toyota insisted. “I’d love to get another win before the end of the year. I thought it was going to come today.
“We’ll have to get one more shot at it next week and see if we can’t get one more win.”
These three drivers have scored four of the last six race wins at Homestead with Hamlin winning from pole position in 2020.
“There’s always concern when it’s not clinched,” Larson allowed Sunday evening on Martinsville pit road. “I absolutely will feel some pressure this week. I know it’s a large gap. Crazy things can happen. Just got to go there and execute like we have all Chase, yeah, just be ready to capitalize.”
Hendrick Motorsports President Jeff Andrews echoed the caution optimism after the Martinsville race, a one-two finish for the team with William Byron and Chase Elliott.
“I think it’s always easier said than done, to say we’re just going to go in there, do our thing, keep doing what we’ve been doing,” Andrews said. “At this time of year there’s a lot of different pressures, situations that come up that these guys, crew chiefs, that do such an amazing job for us have to react to. There are circumstances that you can control and some that you can’t control.
“Next week we’ll go to Homestead, and we’ll control what we can. We’ll do our very best to go down there and put 267 laps together and get the points we need.
I would say that it’s, in our minds, far from over. There’s a lot of racing left, so…”
Practice is set for Friday at 5:30 p.m. before Busch Light Pole Qualifying on Saturday at 2:30 p.m. ET. The NASCAR Cup Series Championship Race is at 3 p.m. ET on NBC, MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.
— NASCAR News Wire —