NASCAR.com’s Pat DeCola ranks the 16 Cup Series drivers in The Chase presented by Mobil 1 after Joey Logano’s win at Bristol Motor Speedway and before Sunday’s race at Kansas Speedway (3 p.m. ET, USA Network, HBO Max, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
RELATED: Cup Series Chase schedule | Cup Series standings
Analysis: The swagger stuck around. Larson followed a fifth-place showing at Darlington Raceway and a World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway win with a Bristol runner-up, becoming the only driver with top-five finishes in all three Chase races and taking the championship lead from Hamlin by a single point. He was right in the middle of the frantic closing battle, too, lurking behind Gibbs and Hocevar before Logano shot underneath the mess and Larson ultimately grabbed second. Kansas is hardly where you’d expect this run to stop: Larson led 78 laps and finished second there in April while becoming the track’s all-time Cup laps-led leader. The No. 5 spent much of the summer looking dangerous without getting paid off for it. Now everybody else is chasing him, and the bill’s due.
Analysis: Logano spent much of the evening at Bristol looking like he might finish third or fourth and wound up stealing the whole thing … because of course he did. Gibbs and Hocevar were beating on each other for the lead, Larson was right there with them and Logano simply drove underneath the scrum on Lap 494 before disappearing with his third win of the season. “Merry Christmas to me,” as he put it afterward. Add a Stage 1 win, 93 laps led and a 73-point night, and the three-time champion is suddenly third in The Chase, only 16 points behind Larson. Kansas has been considerably less cooperative for him lately — 30th this spring and 21st last fall — but conventional logic has a funny way of becoming less useful when speaking about Mr. Logano and what he’s capable of.
Analysis: One point. That’s the entirety of Hamlin’s fall from the top of the standings after three Chase races that have felt strangely quiet by the standard he set all summer, so the panic can quiet down a bit. Bristol included a third-place Stage 1 finish but little else of note on the way to eighth, and Larson finally slipped past him. But Kansas arrives at a particularly useful time: Hamlin led a race-high 131 laps there in April before a late caution and overtime scramble cost him the win … after leading 159 last fall before Chase Elliott stole it in the final corner. The No. 11 still hasn’t produced its signature Chase afternoon just yet. Recent Kansas history — not to mention its entire 2026 campaign — suggests that could change quickly.
Analysis: Bell needed a race where nothing weird happened, and amid all the Bristol insanity, fourth place almost qualified as anonymous, which he was probably just fine with. He quietly climbed from 12th, avoided the late mess and left only 17 points behind Larson, while NASCAR Insights graded the No. 20 first in pit-crew performance. Kansas has supplied plenty of speed, too, even when the finishes haven’t always reflected it — Bell led 47 laps this spring before overtime contact with Reddick helped send him to 20th, and he led 43 more there in last fall’s third-place run. Three races into The Chase, Bell remains close enough to the front that one clean Sunday could flip the whole board again, and it very likely will.
Analysis: There is no writing around the fight here — nor should there be as it stemmed from an incident with major Chase implications. Blaney dominated huge stretches of Bristol, leading a race-high 202 laps and winning Stage 2, then recovered from a commitment-line penalty to drive all the way back to second. One lap after clearing Carson Hocevar, Blaney moved down to defend the bottom, Hocevar stayed in it, and the No. 12 went hard into the outside wall. Blaney finished 33rd, then marched to Hocevar’s pit stall afterward, where the two traded punches before officials and crew members separated them. The box score shows consecutive finishes of 35th and 33rd for Blaney, but the races themselves say the No. 12 remains one of the fastest cars in The Chase and a true title contender. Kansas, where Blaney was 24th in April, now becomes the place to turn all that speed — and frustration — back into points.
Analysis: For much of Saturday night, Gibbs looked capable of sweeping Bristol in 2026. He led 120 laps, somehow survived getting sandwiched three-wide between Alex Bowman and Cole Custer, then spent the closing run trading the lead with Hocevar while Larson and Logano stalked both of them. The final restart finally got away from him, and Logano slipped through while Gibbs faded to fifth. Still, the No. 54 scored points in both stages and leaves Bristol fifth in The Chase, 42 points behind Larson. Ninth at Kansas in April gives him another solid baseline, and the performance has been strong enough lately that there isn’t much need to dress it up. He’s here.
Analysis: There truly is no dull version of the Carson Hocevar experience. He led 39 laps, went door-to-door with Gibbs for the win, finished third for his best Bristol result — and still became the central character of the night after contact sent Blaney into the wall with 42 laps remaining. Then came pit road. Blaney confronted him, Hocevar landed the first punch, Blaney answered and officials eventually pulled the two apart while the crowd roared, with Hocevar later calling it an “old-school Bristol show.” He has now opened his first Chase 11th-eighth-third and climbed to eighth in points, 85 back. Kansas was 13th this spring after a broken pit gun derailed a top-10 run, so he’s not going anywhere. The controversy keeps following him. So does the speed.
Analysis: Bristol went sideways almost immediately for Reddick, and it’s beginning to feel like it’s really slipping away from him here. He started 20th, lost 13 spots before the competition caution and was already a lap down before Stage 1 ended, eventually dropping multiple laps off the pace and finishing 18th. That pushed him 61 points behind Larson and made three Chase races look nothing like the first half of his season. Fortunately, Kansas remembers that version of Reddick just fine. He won there in April despite brushing the wall, dealing with a fuel-system stumble and banging doors with Bell in overtime before running down Larson in the final corners. The No. 45 has looked strangely ordinary lately, but this is probably the last track where anyone should assume that continues.
Analysis: The results sheet has been awfully rude to Briscoe lately. Gateway ended when Chase Elliott’s brake failure collected him while he was running sixth; Bristol ended after he had climbed into seventh late, only for a broken toe link to send the No. 19 to the garage with six laps remaining. That is how a championship-caliber team winds up 87 points back without actually looking like the ninth-best car in The Chase. Kansas should offer a cleaner read. Briscoe finished third there in April, and last fall he started from the pole, led 19 laps and finished fourth. At some point, though, the finishes — his fault or not — need to catch up with the cars. There are worse places than Kansas for the bill to finally come due.
Analysis: Wallace’s Bristol night wasn’t completely uneventful — he got sideways during late contact involving Elliott and Briscoe — but compared with the first two Chase races, seventh probably felt downright peaceful. He remains 92 points behind Larson, though Kansas is exactly the kind of place where the No. 23 can make that number more interesting. Wallace finished fifth there in April and was leading late last fall before a pair of overtime restarts ultimately ended with Hamlin forcing the issue in Turn 3 and Elliott stealing the win. Wallace knows firsthand how to close it out at this track. Sunday would be a useful time to finish the job once more.
Analysis: Byron somehow turned another potential mess into another top 10 as the No. 24 team stays alive. Running ninth with fewer than 60 laps left, contact with Josh Berry sent the No. 24 spinning into the inside wall, yet Byron recovered to finish exactly where he had been running: ninth. That backs up fourth at Gateway and gives him consecutive top 10s after his Chase opened with a last-place disaster at Darlington. Kansas offers another reasonable step after seventh there in April. The comeback remains a long one at 121 points behind his teammate Larson, but at least Byron has stopped digging the hole.
Analysis: Cindric’s Chase remains almost aggressively uneventful, albeit consistent: 13th, 10th, 11th. Even Bristol’s complication was fairly mundane — after running eighth, he had to make an extra stop because the team wasn’t confident the car had gotten enough fuel. He still recovered to 11th, preserving a streak of useful afternoons that simply haven’t moved the championship needle very far. Kansas was much the same this spring, when Cindric climbed from 34th to 12th. The No. 2 keeps avoiding disaster, yes, but at 116 points back, Cindric and Co. could use something considerably more memorable.
Analysis: There isn’t much worth dressing up about Bristol for Elliott. He spent much of the night buried off the lead lap, then spun by himself off Turn 4 with 23 laps remaining before coming home 23rd. That dropped him 117 points behind Larson and extended a Chase opening that has offered almost no sustained momentum. Kansas, however, immediately changes the mood. Elliott won there last fall after restarting eighth in overtime and charging through the chaos to edge Hamlin by 0.069 seconds; he returned this spring and finished eighth. Larson has Hendrick atop the championship, and Byron has started climbing again. Elliott has already shown Kansas can change his season in a hurry, and he might be next.
Analysis: Preece keeps finding ways to hang around. He spent much of Bristol outside the top 10 and needed Elliott’s late spin to grab the free pass, then took advantage and drove home 10th for his second top 10 in three Chase races. That’s great and all, but he remains near the bottom of The Chase standings as the powerhouse-backed drivers around him begin to solidify. Kansas produced an 11th in April, another result that fits the recent theme: solid, useful and in no way enough by itself for somebody 124 points behind Larson. Preece already produced the result nobody saw coming once this season at Daytona. The funny thing is, another one wouldn’t feel nearly as shocking anymore.
Analysis: Buescher finally completed a Chase race without the ending being swallowed by damaged parts or mechanical failure. There was still some Bristol friction — slight contact with Allmendinger leaving his pit stall — but otherwise the No. 17 stayed out of the highlight reel and finished 13th. After Darlington damage and the Gateway brake failure, that qualified as progress. Kansas produced a 10th this spring, including one lap led. Buescher has spent most of 2026 looking capable of something bigger than respectable, but with seven races remaining, the waiting room is getting crowded.
Analysis: Suárez spent much of Bristol in survival mode, and the magic may be running dry. He started 28th, fell multiple laps down and was 18th at halfway before steadily clawing back to 14th — his best finish of The Chase, modest as that distinction may be. The deficit still grew to 134 points, and Kansas wasn’t much more encouraging in April, when Suárez finished 19th after leading a lap. This season has already produced a couple of enormous Suárez plot twists, and at this stage of The Chase, another one probably needs to start before we get to the final act.
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