Kyle Larson, Denny Hamlin and Christopher Bell sit on top of the NASCAR Cup Series standings with four races to go in NASCAR’s return to The Chase. Larson is defending his 2025 championship, looking to close out one era of playoff racing and start another on top, while Hamlin and Bell chase their first title, albeit one for a bit longer than the other.

All three are happy with how the new system has worked, with Hamlin saying that if anyone from the top six wins the Championship, their success will be hard to dispute.

Larson enters Phoenix with a 49-point lead over Hamlin and a 51-point lead over Bell. With a maximum of 76 points on the line in every race, it’s still technically anyone’s game with 304 points possible through the four remaining rounds. The problem for the playoff field is the only driver to pull off a perfect race so far, is the guy their chasing.

Ryan Preece sits at the bottom of the 16-driver playoff field with 2140 points to Larson’s 2367. Only 227 points seperate the entire playoff field; extreme bad luck at the top and extremely good results at the bottom still have the chance to throw the Championship into mayhem.

But with Larson having the hottest six-race start to the playoffs in NASCAR history, with two wins and an average finish of 2.87 through six races, the chance of the swing regresses.

In an alternative universe where the format didn't change for 2026, and the NASCAR Cup Series still used knockout rounds, all three drivers would be safely in the round of eight with four races remaining. The drivers, especially not the ones at the top, don’t care about the what-ifs and are happy to race to the system in front of them.

“I just don't know why we're still talking about it because that's not the format,” Larson said in pre-Phoenix availability. “So it just doesn't matter. This is what it is now.”

“I like what he said,” Bell followed. And I love [the changes]. I love that every race, every stage matters more than it ever has. So there's no more off weeks.”

Phoenix, moved up from the championship finale, would be everyone’s first chance to lock in to the Championship Four.

The win at the start of each stage, in a sense, gave its winner two weeks of breathing room, knowing a bad performance wouldn’t knock them out. The round before Talladega each year is especially important, as the restrictor-plate track doesn't discriminate, given its proclivity for ‘big-one’ crashes.

This year, even with Kyle Larson's record-breaking, dominant run to start The Chase, the drivers feel more uncertain week to week about who has the advantage.
A perfect race nets the winner 76 points: 55 for the win (up from 40 points last year), 10 for each stage win, and 1 point for the fastest lap. Larson is the only driver to run a perfect race this year, with his perfect finish at Kansas.

Bell, Hamlin, Chase Briscoe, and Ryan Blaney, if they want to make real strides towards stopping Larson from going back-to-back, need as close to a perfect race, now.

Hamlin, who was a race away from a long awaited first championship last year at Phoenix, he then started on pole positon, led 208 laps and lost the championship to Kyle Larson. An overtime restart and a gamble on tires saw Ryan Blaney win the race, Larson finish third and Hamlin cross the line in sixth to take second in the championship. Hamlin lost the championship by three points after the Championship four point reset.

In NASCAR’s rework, Larson’s 2025 championship is one of the many in NASCAR’s playoff era where the champion would be unaffected under the 2026 points change, with Larson beating Bell by eight points for the title in the hypothetical.

“I don't love resets, shocker,” Hamlin said to laughs. “But I mean, when you get into the chase or the playoffs, the score is reset for everyone when you're playing in other sports head-to-head. So your regular season really doesn't carry over unless you have some home field advantage. So I think that it is, we race to the format, no doubt about it. But yeah, I don't know. I just think that we certainly, this is better than what we've had in the past. There's zero doubt about that.”

Drivers race to the system that they’re in, and the drivers at the top are locked in looking to take whatever the can off the board from each other as the season winds down. Hamlin doesn’t think it’s time for a hail mary play yet.

“I mean, you don't need to throw Hail Marys till the end of the game. And so I think that you got to keep just getting little small gains, but that's something that we have to start chipping away. Certainly the time is going by. And so chipping away, we'll still get it done, but it has to start sooner than later. So I think, again, I've not hit the panic button at all, but I can see it and I'm just not quite there yet. And so it starts with this weekend. And so if we end up with a larger deficit leaving here than what we started, then yeah, we need to start pressing from this point on.”