The Chase Report presented by Mobil 1: Where we stand after Bristol

The third race of The Chase presented by Mobil 1 saw Joey Logano make all the right moves and earn his third victory of the 2026 NASCAR Cup Series season. Logano joined Tyler Reddick, Denny Hamlin and Ryan Blaney as the only drivers with three or more wins this season. Logano also pulled to within 16 points of Kyle Larson for the lead in the standings. But the big headline, of course, came from the post-race altercation between Blaney and Carson Hocevar that saw fists fly and frustrations boil over.

Here’s where we stand in The Chase coming out of the Bass Pro Shops Night Race and heading to Kansas Speedway for Sunday’s Hollywood Casino 400 (3 p.m. ET, USA Network, HBO Max, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).

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RELATED: Bristol results | Full Cup Series standings

Chase Changer

This week, it has to be the incident between Blaney and Hocevar on Lap 458 of 500 at Bristol. Not only did Hocevar’s contact with Blaney lead to a post-race skirmish for the ages, but Blaney’s 33rd-place finish also put him in a big hole heading to Kansas. Blaney now sits in sixth in the standings, 52 points back, and although it wasn’t quite a knockout blow (no pun intended), it certainly will make winning a second championship more difficult.

It will be interesting to see what happens next. Will Blaney go for payback? Or will he just put his head down and start chipping away at the points deficit? He still has plenty going for him because of favorable tracks coming up on the schedule (Phoenix, Talladega, Martinsville). Plus, there’s the speed he has in his Team Penske No. 12 Ford. According to Racing Insights’ season-long averages, only two drivers have had better speed than Blaney this season, and both of them are multiple-time champions (Logano and Larson). The problem is both are also drivers he’s now chasing in the standings.

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But what about the other side of this incident? Hocevar has had a good start to his Chase, and the third-place finish at Bristol was a career best. He moved up to eighth in the standings. At 85 points back, there is still work to do should he reach the upper echelon, but he’s definitely moving in the right direction. The higher he goes in the owner standings, the better his team’s payout will be at the end of the season. But now that he has another enemy out there in Blaney, Hocevar just increased the chances that he could be sent into the fence himself, which could stop that progress.

The Chase Board

It’s hard to believe that 11 races ago, Logano was 20th in the standings and looking nowhere near being capable of making a run for a fourth championship. But here we are three races into The Chase, and the No. 22 Team Penske Ford pilot has forced his way into the conversation.

Logano’s Bristol victory leaped him four spots in the standings to third place, and he had everything you’d expect to see in a championship contender. There was sustained dominance, including a Stage 1 win, a third-place finish in Stage 2 and 93 laps led. But what made the performance special were the moves he made to grab the lead with seven laps remaining. That type of late-race, clutch performance was vintage Logano, and it showed he still can pounce on an opportunity and take advantage of it.

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What Logano needs to do next, however, is show that he can have the same type of dominance on tracks that aren’t short tracks, which is where all three of his victories have come this season (North Wilkesboro, Richmond, Bristol). He’s probably going to need to be just as dominant on a different track type, because the only shorter tracks left on the schedule are at Phoenix and Martinsville. In order for him to make up more ground on the leaders, he will need to pick up points elsewhere.

Source: Racing Insights

Next Up

Kansas starts a string of three straight 1.5-mile tracks on the schedule, otherwise known as the bread-and-butter of NASCAR tracks. Despite that reputation, drivers haven’t seen a 1.5-mile track since July 5 at Chicagoland Speedway when Chase Briscoe drove home with the win. Before that, it was Charlotte Motor Speedway, where Daniel Suárez won the Coca-Cola 600. Other winners at 1.5-mile tracks this season include: Chase Elliott (Texas), Tyler Reddick (Kansas) and Denny Hamlin (Las Vegas).

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If we see a repeat of those results, this three-race stretch could be an opportunity for some drivers who’ve dropped in The Chase standings to rebound. Hamlin, in particular, could use a pick-me-up as he’s seen his 25-point lead at the start of The Chase turn into a one-point deficit just three contests in. Despite posting top-10 results in his last two races, he didn’t lead any laps at World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway or Bristol, so he needs to return to that dominance he had earlier in the season, which included a stretch of three straight triumphs.

Hamlin leads active drivers with four wins at Kansas. But what’s more striking is that he has finished in the top five in all of the races on 1.5-mile tracks this season. That’s an impressive record, so this three-race run of 1.5-mile tracks could come at exactly the right time for him. However, he will likely receive resistance from Larson, who has led over 1,000 laps at Kansas in his career. Plus, Larson has three wins at Kansas himself, including more recent wins in 2024 and 2025 than Hamlin has had (2023).

Perhaps you remember that dramatic finish in 2023 when Hamlin nudged Larson into the wall on the final lap and took the checkered flag in what was another all-timer of a finish. The way this Chase is going, it wouldn’t surprise anyone if we saw that kind of drama again.