What to Watch: Charlotte Chase

Track: Charlotte Motor Speedway
Location: Concord, North Carolina
Track length: 1.5 miles
When: 3 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

Balancing championship defense with offensive mentality

CONCORD, N.C. — In all three national series, the No. 1 seed entering The Chase presented by Mobil 1 has lost the top spot.

Denny Hamlin, Justin Allgaier and Layne Riggs have each surrendered their points leads during The Chase and have ground to make up if they hope to hoist championship trophies at Homestead-Miami Speedway. Current points leaders Sheldon Creed (O’Reilly Auto Parts Series) and Kaden Honeycutt (Craftsman Truck Series) have each failed to build healthy gaps in their championship leads in their respective series’ most recent events. Honeycutt lost 20 points in his Truck Series lead to Riggs in the closing laps of Friday night’s Chase race at Charlotte after sliding up into the wall and being passed for the lead and win by the No. 34 Front Row Motorsports driver.

Those reversals offer a cautionary note for Cup points leader Kyle Larson, who enters Sunday’s Bank of America 400, the first fall race at Charlotte on the 1.5-mile oval layout since 2017, with a 40-point advantage over Hamlin after a blistering start to The Chase.

Ryan Blaney, who sits fifth in The Chase, compared the pressure of defending a points lead to a recent college football game between two of the country’s best teams.

MORE: Weekend schedule | At-track photos: Charlotte

“When Ohio State (No. 1 ranked at the time) played Texas early this year, I’m a big Buckeye fan, they got up, they kind of started playing a little safe, and Texas came back,” Blaney said. “When you start having that lead and trying to keep it, you can maybe shift your mindset to where guys that are chasing, it’s like, ‘obviously they can’t afford a mistake either.’ There’s that pressure there of like, ‘we can’t bleed anymore.’ It’s just a different mindset of like, ‘oh, we have opportunity to go catch this person.’ But I’d much rather have that weight on my shoulders of leading it and just trying to maintain it than having to chase.”

With qualifying washed out due to inclement weather Saturday, two-time Cup champ Larson will lead the field to green Sunday and hold the advantageous first pit stall at Charlotte. He said bluntly that any pressure of being the points leader is a manufactured talking point and there’s no reason to change course regardless of the No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports team’s situation.

“I think the media kind of tries to get you to think about it a lot,” Larson said. “For us, I think we’ve done a good job of just focusing on our race and trying to maximize it, and I don’t think that you should venture off of that. It’s easier said than done, I think. But we’ve done so well in these first five. Why change what your approach has been?”

WATCH: NASCAR video highlights

Recipe for success

Larson has breezed through the first half of the 2026 Cup Series Chase with a whopping average finish of 2.2. He joins a rarefied group of drivers who have blitzed through a five-race stretch during any iteration of the Cup Series postseason, which first debuted in 2004.

The two-time series titleholder joined a crop of drivers who have finished no worse than second in the points standings after race No. 36.

Speed reads

Race-day essentials:

• Charlotte hub: Weekend information, pit stalls, additional results | Read more
• Sunday Setup: Crew chiefs face unknowns after Saturday washout | Read more
• Paint Scheme Preview: Home-cooked designs for Charlotte | View gallery
• Neil Paine: Make-or-break moment looms for Denny Hamlin | Read more
• NASCAR Classics: Rewind with video-vault replays from Charlotte | Watch now
• Power Rankings: Briscoe bolts forward in the latest Top 16 | This week’s ranks