Chase battle for top six heads to NHMS

With two regular-season races remaining in the 2026 NASCAR Cup Series season, it’s time for a check-in to see how the race for The Chase is progressing.

Reminder: The top 16 drivers in points make The Chase. There is no more win-and-in. The regular-season points leader starts The Chase with 2,100 points and second place starts with 2,075. Third place starts with 2,065 points, then drivers are separated by five-point increments through 16th place.

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The Race for No. 1

Denny Hamlin continues to put a stranglehold on the top spot in the standings, and it’s desperate times for everyone else. Hamlin finished fourth on Saturday night at Richmond, scoring 46 points, and he emerged from there with a 115-point lead over Ryan Blaney. Even though Blaney is the defending winner at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, the site of Sunday’s race, Hamlin’s history at the “Magic Mile” is nothing short of excellent, with three wins and 19 top 10s in 32 races there. In other words, don’t expect Denny to back down.

Blaney, meanwhile, did enough to leapfrog Ty Gibbs in the standings and into second place thanks to a 41-point effort at Richmond that included a Stage 1 win. But after he won his fourth Busch Light Pole Award of the season on Friday and led 88 laps Saturday, some may have expected a better finish than 13th. Still, overall it was a good night for Blaney, who looks solidly positioned for The Chase.

Ty Gibbs’ short-track magic came to an abrupt halt with a 15th-place finish at Richmond and only 22 points on the night after an early pit-road penalty. He’ll look to rebound at New Hampshire, where his best finish is only 16th in three career appearances. He’ll need to buck that trend in order to make up any ground this week.

The Mythical Top Six

After a stretch of four finishes of 30th or worse in six races, Tyler Reddick stopped the bleeding with an 11th-place run in which he led laps and tallied 28 points. But he still lost 18 points to Hamlin and desperately needs some momentum heading into The Chase to get back into championship form. Reddick has had a couple of sixth-place finishes in his last three runs at New Hampshire, so there’s hope he can continue on an upward swing.

Not many drivers are hotter than Chase Briscoe right now as the only thing he didn’t do at Richmond was close out the victory. The driver of the No. 19 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota led the most laps on Saturday night (171 of 400) en route to a second-place finish and has six top-six finishes in his last seven outings. He has three top-10 finishes in five New Hampshire races, so it wouldn’t be a surprise to see him continue to stay as hot as a boiling lobster this week.

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Chase Elliott and Christopher Bell are in a dead heat for the last spot in the mythical top six. Elliott righted the No. 9 Chevrolet’s ship with a fifth-place run at Richmond, marking his first top-10 finish since May 31 at Nashville and leading a brigade as all four Hendrick drivers finished in the top 10. However, Elliott will have his work cut out staying in front of Bell in the standings, because Bell has two wins and four top-10 finishes in six races at Loudon.

Kyle Larson got a much-needed sixth-place finish at Richmond and moved up two spots in the standings. He’s never won at New Hampshire, but he has an average finish of 10.9 there with nine top-10 finishes in 15 races. Plus, he has to be absolutely stoked after winning the Knoxville Nationals on Saturday during a wild doubleheader night of racing for him.

The Middle Ground

Joey Logano has gone from 20th in the standings to ninth in a matter of six races and is proof that a driver can make up a lot of ground in this points system if they go on a hot streak. Logano is coming off his second win in four races and is set up well for his home track in New Hampshire, where he has two wins and 10 top fives in 27 races. Logano is only one point behind Larson in eighth place, so his upward mobility might continue this week.

Carson Hocevar is doing the opposite of Logano and has dropped from fifth in the standings after Indianapolis to 11th after Richmond, where he had a last-place finish due to an engine issue. That came on top of a 31st-place finish at Iowa, so Hocevar needs some momentum before The Chase starts. But on the bright side, he’s still only 15 points behind Larson in eighth place, so a lot could change in two weeks.

William Byron has stacked back-to-back top-10 finishes for the first time since a string of four in a row early in the season that spanned from Phoenix Raceway to Martinsville Speedway. His ninth-place finish at Richmond came after another ninth-place run at Iowa. Still, he dropped one spot in the standings as Logano whizzed by him after his victory on Saturday night. Byron has only one top-five finish in eight races at New Hampshire, but he’s had success at Daytona, where he could build some late momentum heading into The Chase.

The Cutline Battle

Austin Cindric picked a great time to have his best race of the season as he finished third and scored 48 points. That allowed him to move up to 15th place in the standings, and he gained 28 points against the cutline. He’s also just 13 points behind Bubba Wallace for 14th place. However, Cindric isn’t completely out of the woods yet, as he has never finished better than 13th at New Hampshire.

Shane van Gisbergen had a solid 14th-place finish at Richmond, but Cindric’s big night put SVG in the precarious 16th and final position for The Chase. The good news is he opened up a 50-point gap over Ryan Preece in a race where Preece was expected to gain ground. SVG has only raced once at New Hampshire and he finished 32nd.

Looking down the list of drivers beneath the cutline, Brad Keselowski has the best history at New Hampshire with two wins and 16 top-10 finishes in 25 races, but his last two outings at the “Magic Mile” have netted no finish better than 23rd place. Keselowski finished 26th last week at Richmond despite having a strong history there, too.