NASCAR.com’s Pat DeCola ranks the 16 Cup Series drivers in The Chase presented by Mobil 1 after Kyle Larson’s win at World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway and before Saturday night’s race at Bristol Motor Speedway (7:30 p.m. ET, USA Network, HBO Max, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
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Analysis: Hamlin has not opened The Chase with the kind of authority his regular season suggested was coming, yet he still leaves Gateway exactly where he started it: atop the standings. Contact with Larson and a slow late pit stop complicated an otherwise respectable afternoon, but ninth was enough to preserve a nine-point lead with eight races remaining. Now comes a stretch that should suit him far better, beginning with Bristol, where Hamlin owns four Cup wins, 21 top 10s and more than 1,200 laps led. Two messy races have invited the field back into the conversation, but Bristol feels like the first real chance for Hamlin to remind everyone why he entered The Chase as the heavy favorite.
Analysis: Whatever swagger Hendrick Motorsports had misplaced over the summer appears to have resurfaced all at once and is primarily concentrated in the defending champ and his No. 5 team. Larson ended a 51-race winless streak at Gateway, personally pushed for four tires on the decisive stop and then used them to hunt down Joey Logano before surviving two overtimes for his first victory since May 2025. The payoff in the standings was enormous: Larson gained 40 points on Hamlin in one afternoon and is suddenly a scant nine tallies away from holding the championship lead. Now comes Bristol, where he has three Cup wins and led 284 of 505 laps this spring before finishing third. We’ve wondered recently whether the title version of Larson was beginning to reappear. Gateway answered pretty loudly.
Analysis: Bell‘s 19th-place finish is one of those results that tells you less about the car than about the afternoon. The Southern 500 winner was still running near the front late before getting swept into the Lap 223 crash involving Bubba Wallace, Josh Berry and Tyler Reddick, leaving him 18 points behind Hamlin rather than right on his bumper as he was. Bristol should help him get right back to it — Bell won the Night Race there last year and owns seven top 10s in 10 Cup starts. His 27th-place spring result came after an early spin and stands out as the exception in an otherwise excellent Bristol resume. One chaotic Sunday did little to cool the championship case (especially where it was so chaotic for so many others, too).
Analysis: Gateway will go down as one of the ultimate “what might have been” races for Blaney. He entered as a strong favorite, looking like a good bet to finally reel in a Gateway win, scored fourth-place stage finishes in both segments and was running sixth when a brake rotor failure sent the No. 12 into the wall, turning a potential title-building afternoon into a 35th-place finish and a 17-point loss to Hamlin. The good news is that Bristol is about as logical a rebound spot as Blaney could ask for. The short-track ace led 190 laps and finished second there in April, and his career record includes five top fives, nine top 10s and 775 laps led. Gateway changed the math, not the underlying championship argument, and his first Bristol win could come at a most opportune time.
Analysis: Somehow, a 54-point afternoon still felt like the one that got away from No. 22. Logano sat on the pole, won Stage 1 and controlled large portions of Gateway before Larson‘s four-tire strategy ultimately flipped the race late. Third was his fifth top-five finish in five Cup starts at the track, but a win would have been worth 21 more points, a massive swing for a driver still 51 behind Hamlin. Bristol only strengthens the sense that Logano is becoming dangerous and set to strike again soon — two career wins there, seventh in the spring and fifth last fall. We have seen this particular three-time champion build momentum at inconvenient times before, and he’s perhaps in the midst of his greatest heist yet.
Analysis: Reddick‘s Gateway race was compromised almost before it started. Contact with Daniel Suárez sent the No. 45 into the wall on Lap 3, and after spending most of the day clawing back, he was collected again in the late multicar wreck that also trapped Bell and Wallace. The 25th-place finish stretched his Chase deficit to 42 points, interrupting the rebound that had started to take shape over the previous few weeks. Bristol offers a mixed read: Reddick finished fourth there this spring, but that is one of only two top 10s in 10 Cup starts. The No. 45 rediscovered its speed before The Chase, but it could now use a race where nothing gets in the way of showing it.
Analysis: Few drivers endured more Gateway chaos while still repeatedly finding their way back toward the front. Briscoe spun after contact with Wallace while running sixth, later turned Ross Chastain and was then collected when Elliott‘s brakes failed while the No. 19 was again running sixth. The 32nd-place finish dropped him to 59 points behind Hamlin, right at the back edge of the leading Chase cluster before a notable 29-point gap opens to Carson Hocevar in ninth. Bristol could steady things quickly: Briscoe was fifth there in April and led 127 laps in last year‘s Night Race before finishing ninth. Sunday’s result was ugly, but the speed underneath it for this championship-capable No. 19 team was not.
Analysis: Gateway gave Gibbs a little bit of everything except a clean afternoon. He spun Erik Jones, traded contact with Hocevar, lost track position amid a restart/pit strategy mix-up and eventually got collected in the Lap 228 pileup, finishing 18th. Even so, he remains tied with Logano at 51 points behind Hamlin and now heads to the site of his first Cup victory earlier this year. Gibbs won at Bristol in April after taking the lead late, and last fall he led a whopping 201 laps there before finishing 10th. Whatever drama surrounds the No. 54 right now, Bristol has been one place where performance has spoken pretty clearly above all else and he has a chance to make a huge statement on Saturday night.
Analysis: There is still almost never a dull Carson Hocevar race, but lately the results have started making the commotion easier for him to back up. Gateway included contact with Chris Buescher and Gibbs, an extra stop to retighten the right-rear wheel and another late incident — yet Hocevar still finished eighth for his career-best 10th top 10 of the season. He also moved to ninth in The Chase, though the 88-point deficit keeps him still on the wrong side of the first meaningful standings tier break. Bristol has been solid territory early in his career: 10th this spring, seventh last fall and a 14.0 average finish through six Cup starts. The pace is there, as we know. The question will always just be, apparently, how long the path around the pace will stay clean. Until someone proves otherwise on the race track (or elsewhere), it appears that he’s set to continue his smooth sailing up the standings.
Analysis: Wallace‘s 14th at Gateway required quite a bit of reconstruction amidst the chaos, which honestly is a good showing of his team’s mettle. He spun after contact with Briscoe while racing four-wide, recovered into the top 10 and then triggered the late crash with Berry that also collected Bell and Reddick, but rebounded enough that the day wasn’t catastrophic. That left him 90 points behind Hamlin and still sitting at the front edge of The Chase‘s increasingly separated lower half. Bristol has not historically been one of Wallace‘s better tracks — just two top 10s in 14 Cup starts — though 11th there this spring was perfectly respectable. The title path is narrowing and a similar showing won’t gain him any ground, but the No. 23 has spent enough of 2026 running near the front to keep it from disappearing entirely and the possibility of a win remains.
Analysis: In a Gateway race where 14 of the 16 Chase drivers had some sort of issue, Cindric mostly stayed out of trouble and collected a useful 10th-place finish. It was his third top 10 in five races, a quietly encouraging stretch for a driver who entered The Chase buried by the reset. Bristol is where the optimism gets harder to sustain, unfortunately. Cindric has no top 10s in seven Cup starts there, finished 16th this spring and was 30th in last year‘s Night Race. At 108 points back, the No. 2 is running out of opportunities for quiet progress to be enough. Bristol would be an excellent place to finally rewrite some history, but it’s a tall task. 
Analysis: Elliott‘s Gateway race was headed somewhere genuinely promising before the brakes disappeared. Running seventh on Lap 214, the No. 9 suffered a brake rotor failure, spun and collected Briscoe, turning one of his better afternoons into a 31st-place finish. He is now 93 points behind Hamlin, while Larson‘s sudden return to Victory Lane has made the contrast inside Hendrick even sharper. Bristol is difficult to diagnose for the 2020 champ: Elliott owns five top fives and nine top 10s there, but the two most recent results are 22nd this spring and 38th last fall. There is still plenty of championship-caliber history attached to the No. 9 and he’s in no way out of this, but the current form needs to start resembling it much more consistently. 
Analysis: Preece continues to hang around as he searches high and low for another Daytona-sized jolt. He brushed the wall while running 11th at Gateway, recovered to 17th and leaves the second Chase race 113 points behind Hamlin. A massive hole, but Bristol at least offers something tangible to work with. Preece finished eighth there in April and owns three career top 10s with a 14.8 average finish despite never leading a Cup lap at the track. He already changed the entire direction of his season once at Daytona, and this team has nothing to lose at this point. With the standings gap widening, another swing of that magnitude would certainly come in handy and they can’t be counted out yet. 
Analysis: Gateway finally delivered the kind of clean Sunday Byron had been missing — he’s now mostly just running out of time. Starting 24th, he drove to fourth and snapped an eight-race stretch without a top five, restoring at least a little life to a Chase that opened disastrously at Darlington. The cruel part: Byron gained exactly zero points on tHamlin because the No. 11‘s stage haul offset the finishing-position difference, leaving the gap at 114. Bristol is no obvious continuation spot either — he left Tennessee 30th this spring and owns just two top fives in 14 Cup starts. Gateway was badly needed evidence that the No. 24 can still run like itself, but it needs to now take inspiration from its No. 5 teammate and snap the winless skid.
Analysis: Buescher‘s Gateway race went from anonymous to disastrous when a brake rotor failed entering Turn 1 with nine laps remaining, sending the No. 17 into the wall and leaving him 27th. He lost 23 points to Hamlin and now sits 111 back, one of several Chase drivers who cannot afford many more weekends that simply disappear. Bristol at least carries genuine great rebound potential: Buescher won the 2022 Night Race there and has five career top 10s, plus finishes of 13th this spring and 11th last fall. If there is a place to pull this Chase back toward relevance, a track where he has one of his signature Cup Series moments is a reasonable starting point. 
Analysis: Suárez never really escaped the opening laps at Gateway, and it didn’t get much better from there. Contact with Reddick sent him into the wall on Lap 3, more nose damage followed while avoiding another crash and the afternoon eventually unraveled into a 29th-place finish. The result dropped him to last among the 16 Chase drivers, 119 points behind Hamlin. Bristol offers little statistical reassurance, either, with two top 10s in 16 Cup starts, a 19.7 average finish and 12th this spring before a crash ended last year‘s Night Race. The season has already produced a couple of enormous Suárez swings, but eight races remain for another one to arrive. And he very likely needs more than one.