Kyle Larson cemented his name among NASCAR’s titans on Sunday, winning his third Cup Series championship at Homestead-Miami Speedway. After starting the 2026 Chase still seeking their first win of the season, the No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports team laid down a dominant, championship-caliber performance over the following 10 races.
How Kyle Larson Won
Larson clinched the championship at the end of Stage 1, scoring seven stage points to Christopher Bell’s eight and Denny Hamlin’s five. With the stage points and finishing points still available to the three remaining drivers, any path to beating Larson was erased.
The fateful caution flew on Lap 78 when pole-sitter Chase Briscoe had an engine go down with just two laps remaining in the stage. Because a caution with fewer than 10 laps in a stage is deemed the stage break, all stage points were allotted then and there.
Kyle Larson is now the first driver to clinch the NASCAR Cup Series championship before the end of the final race since Matt Kenseth did so in 2003, the final year of NASCAR’s full-season points format. Kenseth mathematically sealed his championship the week before the finale at Rockingham Speedway.
A Championship Year
Larson won three out of the final nine races of 2026 and finished top-five in three more. Though Denny Hamlin appeared to be the runaway championship favorite at the start of the Chase, the No. 11 team failed to convert in multiple races and allowed Larson to quickly the gap.
With three races to go in the 2026 season, things were shaping up for a hard-fought, tight championship battle. Christopher Bell was just five points behind Larson after Phoenix Raceway, with Chase Briscoe only 24 points back. After Larson won at Talladega Superspeedway and ran top-10 at Martinsville Speedway, he bought himself a 67-point cushion for the season finale.
Historical Perspective
Hendrick Motorsports now has 16 NASCAR Cup Series championships in their team’s history, the most of any organization in history. Jimmie Johnson logged seven of those titles, Jeff Gordon added four, Kyle Larson is up to three, and one each have come from Chase Elliott and Terry Labonte.
On an individual level, Larson is the 11th driver in NASCAR history to win three Cup Series championships. He joins Joey Logano as the only active drivers who’ve accomplished the feat, as well as Tony Stewart and Jimmie Johnson as the only racers to win three or more titles in the 21st century. Larson is the first driver to win back-to-back championships since Jimmie Johnson won five straight from 2006 to 2010.
Every driver with two or more championships has been elected to the Hall of Fame, with the exception of Larson and Logano plus the late Kyle Busch, all of whom have yet to appear on a ballot.
Hamlin and Bell: Bridesmaids Again
Denny Hamlin’s 2026 championship campaign fell short, putting him in the familiar position of being one of the best drivers in a given season and no trophy to show for it. Hamlin has now missed the championship in all 21 seasons of his career, keeping him as one of the sport’s greatest competitors who haven’t ascended its highest mountain.
Christopher Bell’s season wasn’t the statistical best of his career, but it is one of his closer brushed with a championship. After missing the Championship Four in the last two seasons of the Cup Series playoffs, Bell entered the season finale with a chance at glory for just the second time in his career. Still, at 67 points behind Larson, he needed a miracle to unseat the defending series champion.
