What to Watch: Chase hits Las Vegas

Track: Las Vegas Motor Speedway
Location: Las Vegas, Nevada
Track length: 1.5 miles
When: 5:30 p.m. ET
Where to tune in: USA Network, HBO Max, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio
Race purse: $11,233,037
Race distance: 267 laps | 400.5 miles
Stages: 80 | 165 | 267
Sunday’s starting lineup | Pit stall assignments

Contenders look to gap the pretenders at Las Vegas

LAS VEGAS — There is a clear divide atop the NASCAR Cup Series standings as The Chase presented by Mobil 1 approaches its midpoint.

Kyle Larson has overtaken Denny Hamlin for the points lead, and the two rival veterans now command the championship hunt after four of 10 races in the Cup Series postseason.

Will anyone else join them as the season reaches its title-deciding fever pitch?

MORE: Weekend schedule | At-track photos: Las Vegas

Entering Sunday’s South Point 400, the top four drivers in the standings are within one race’s worth of points of each other: Larson, Hamlin, Christopher Bell (50 points behind Larson) and Joey Logano (67 points behind Larson). Larson dominated last week’s race at Kansas Speedway, earning a maximum 76-point day — a race win, both stage wins and the Xfinity Fastest Lap. He and the No. 5 team have proven they are here to defend their title with a vengeance, posting two wins, one runner-up result and a fifth-place finish in the opening four races of The Chase.

“I would love to continue to put together weekends like we have where we gain a lot of points,” Larson said Saturday, “just to stretch out (so) that way, if we do have a blowout race, you can not fall down the order a lot. But yeah, I mean that’s not guaranteed. So yeah, I mean that’s really not on my mind when I’m out there. I’m just kind of treating it as just trying to get a good practice, qualify well, get a good first stage, get a good second stage and a good third stage and then you look at the points afterwards. But yeah, it’s been a good start to The Chase, obviously at this point, and would love to keep it going.”

Hamlin entered The Chase as the No. 1 seed and is firmly in the hunt — particularly entering Las Vegas as the winner of each of the last two races in the Nevada desert. But for the first time since June, Hamlin is no longer the points leader, trailing Larson by 26 points entering Sunday’s South Point 400. And in four Chase races, Hamlin has just one top-five finish. That won’t be enough if Larson is able to maintain anything close to his current pace of 59.25 points per race.

But the true championship threats still have a chance to separate themselves from the rest of the field — and perhaps already are.

“If you can separate yourself by putting really good finishes and wins together early in a Chase, then typically, yeah, you’re going to narrow the field down and narrow the competition down,” Hamlin said. “So that goes back into the ‘do the work now, and then you check out the results later’ type of mentality. But overall, yeah, it’s all just going to work itself out however it is, and there’s kind of peaks and valleys to this that some teams had a rough maybe week or two and I think that they could end up going on a run and winning a couple and putting themselves right back in it, too. You just never know.”

WATCH: NASCAR video highlights

Behind the quartet up front sit other stars like Ryan Blaney (-91), Ty Gibbs (-94) and Tyler Reddick (-111). With the gap widening between them and the championship frontrunners, they see that time and points are already starting to slip away.

“We’ve got to win some,” Gibbs said. “I’m gonna bet on myself. We’re gonna do it this weekend.”

Even Larson isn’t ready to count most drivers out of championship contention yet, so a victory by someone like Gibbs could heavily impact The Chase standings.

“I don’t view my gap as anything, where I think a lot of media members, it sounds like, view it that way,” Larson said. “I also don’t consider as many people out of it as it seems like everybody else does. There’s just a lot of racing left. There’s a lot of points on the table. There’s a lot of things that can happen. There’s a lot of restarts left. There’s all sorts of things. So yeah, I think with that, you just stay focused on yourself and stay focused on your team and what you’re doing during the week to improve and prepare for the upcoming race.”

What lies ahead is The Chase’s most pivotal race yet — one that will set the tone for the rest of the 2026 championship chase.

Topping the charts on intermediate tracks

Denny Hamlin is in the midst of a historic run on 1.5-mile tracks, entering Las Vegas with eight consecutive top-five finishes on intermediates — a streak that ties him for seventh-longest all-time with Jimmie Johnson.

While Hamlin has flexed his muscle on intermediates, here’s a look at how all drivers in The Chase have fared on average this season, including their best 2026 finish at a 1.5-mile track, courtesy of Racing Insights:

Speed reads

Race-day essentials:

• Las Vegas hub: Weekend information, pit stalls, additional results | Read more
• Sunday Setup: Kansas lessons inform crew chiefs for Las Vegas approach | Read more
• Paint Scheme Preview: Bright designs for the Las Vegas lights | View gallery
• Neil Paine: Can anything slow Kyle Larson’s roll? | Read more
• NASCAR Classics: Rewind with full-race replays from Las Vegas | Watch now
• Power Rankings: Christopher Bell plays crucial role in title fight | This week’s ranks