NASCAR.com’s Pat DeCola ranks the 16 Cup Series drivers in The Chase presented by Mobil 1 after Chase Briscoe’s win at Charlotte Motor Speedway and before Sunday’s race at Phoenix Raceway (3 p.m. ET, USA Network, HBO Max, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
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Analysis: Larson finally finished worse than fifth in The Chase, but naturally … his championship lead somehow got bigger, anyway. The No. 5 looked capable of winning Charlotte early, leading 97 laps and taking Stage 1 before Christopher Bell eventually wrestled the lead away. Contact from Hamlin on a restart knocked Larson from second to seventh, and he ultimately finished sixth after spending the closing run fighting to stay among the leaders. That still gives him an average finish of 2.8 through six Chase races, the best opening six-race stretch in postseason history, and a 49-point advantage over Hamlin with four to go. Briscoe and Bell have certainly started making things interesting, but Larson isn’t exactly handing over control. Phoenix is where he clinched his second championship last November without leading a lap, then finished third in March, so he‘ll likely keep rolling.
Analysis: At Kansas, he couldn’t quite hold off Larson. At Vegas, Larson couldn’t catch him. At Charlotte, his teammate nearly stole it at the stripe, yet Briscoe still found a way. That’s one hell of an exciting three-race stretch, culminating in his first consecutive Cup victories and a 0.029-second win over Bell — the closest finish of 2026. The No. 19 led the final 61 laps after its pit crew helped turn the race around, with Briscoe’s team recording the three fastest stops of the afternoon. That crew now ranks first in the series for the season, too, and suddenly just about everything is clicking. Briscoe has gained 58 points on Larson over the last two races, chopping his championship deficit to 65. Phoenix wasn’t kind to him earlier this year, when he crashed out and finished 37th, but that almost feels like a different lifetime now, and he’s a proven winner at the track. Briscoe and the No. 19 are no longer just threatening to change The Chase; they already have.
Analysis: Eight second-place finishes this season. Eight. The No. 20 was arguably the best car at Charlotte, leading 93 laps, winning Stage 2 and ranking first in both speed and defense according to NASCAR Insights. Briscoe’s crew ultimately gained the advantage on pit road, and Bell spent the final 61 laps trying to reclaim it, nearly pulling off the pass in the final corner and almost beating him at the line. That’s painful, sure, but he’s now only 51 points behind Larson and heads to a track where he’s been downright outstanding. Bell won the spring Phoenix races in 2024 and 2025, then led 176 laps there this March before finishing — you guessed it — second. It’s hard to imagine a more appropriate place for his latest breakthrough to Victory Lane.
Analysis: Phoenix is coming, and Hamlin probably doesn’t need a refresher on how quickly things can go wrong there and make or break a championship. He led 208 laps in last year’s title race before a late caution and overtime strategy scramble helped hand the title to Larson. Now he’s heading back to Arizona still searching for his first series crown, and the circumstances are somehow feeling a little too familiar again. Hamlin finished fifth at Charlotte despite a pit-road safety violation and an awkward stop that forced him to back up before leaving his stall, but still lost another nine points to Larson. He’s 49 back now, with only two top-five finishes in six Chase races after dominating much of the regular season. The No. 11 remains first in season-long speed according to NASCAR Insights, and Hamlin finished fifth at Phoenix this spring, so we know the talent and equipment aren’t going anywhere. But neither is the clock, and the mistakes are catastrophically expensive at this point. He needs a flawless race.
Analysis: Lost in the Larson-Briscoe-Bell-Hamlin championship shuffle is a pretty important development: Blaney has quietly been just as capable of executing as that upper tier. Third at Charlotte marks three consecutive top-five finishes, his longest such streak since last season, and it came despite a pit-road speeding penalty and another slow stop that cost him five positions. The No. 12 ranked third in both speed and passing Sunday, continuing a stretch in which the car has looked considerably better than a couple of crash-induced finishing positions have made it appear. Now comes Phoenix, where Blaney has won the last two Cup races, including this spring’s thriller over Bell, and probably no one in the field is happier to see that track coming up. He’s still 85 points behind Larson, but with four races remaining, another desert win could make things interesting in a hurry. Blaney has the speed, he just needs his pit stops to cooperate, as he has all season long.
Analysis: Reddick continues to look a little more like himself lately, even if the results still aren’t quite doing him justice. Charlotte was another adventure, with contact while battling Cindric for second, a brush with the wall and another incident involving lapped traffic all interrupting an afternoon that ultimately ended eighth. Despite all that, NASCAR Insights rated the No. 45 first in passing, and he’s now finished third and eighth in consecutive weeks after a fairly miserable stretch. That’s encouraging, especially after the way this team’s season has unraveled since spring, but the task remains at hand. He’s 114 points behind Larson with four races remaining, and Phoenix produced an eighth-place finish in March. The speed is showing signs of returning, which is encouraging. but the championship opportunity can’t wait around for the rest to catch up.
Analysis: Logano has stayed close enough to matter without doing anything particularly spectacular lately, and it feels like that could change soon. Charlotte was another example, as contact with Ty Gibbs on an early restart forced an extra stop and sent the No. 22 backward before Logano recovered to ninth. That’s consecutive top 10s, though neither afternoon offered much evidence that the three-time champion is ready to run down the guys currently controlling The Chase. Fortunately, the calendar is about to get more interesting for him and Team Penske at large. Logano has four Phoenix victories and started from the pole there in March, leading significant portions of the race before a crash ended his afternoon in 31st. He’s 92 points behind Larson, which is considerably less comfortable than where he stood after winning Bristol, but then again, this is precisely the kind of situation in which Logano has made himself hard to put away over the years, and he’s certainly still in it.
Analysis: The finish (17th) suggests Cindric’s intermediate breakthrough stalled out at Charlotte, but the race itself says something a little different. He was challenging Larson for the lead when the competition caution arrived, scored fourth- and sixth-place stage finishes and spent a considerable portion of Sunday looking capable of another top five. The No. 2 eventually faded, ending his streak of two consecutive top-five finishes and costing him ground in the championship. That’s disappointing, but it doesn’t make Kansas and Vegas any less real. The bigger question now is whether Penske’s recent gains on 1.5-mile tracks will translate elsewhere as it hits some more favorable locales, even if Phoenix was downright miserable for Cindric in March, when a crash left him 34th. He’s 145 points behind Larson and the last three races established something worth building on, but now comes the harder part.
Analysis: At some point, you simply run out of ways to explain away the finishes. Gibbs was running eighth when a Lap 41 incident at Charlotte damaged the No. 54’s suspension, ultimately sending him to the garage and leaving him 34th. That follows consecutive 17th-place finishes at Kansas and Las Vegas, turning what once looked like a promising Chase into a pretty brutal three-week stretch. The speed hasn’t completely disappeared — NASCAR Insights still rates Gibbs second in season-long passing and fifth in defense — but the results certainly have. Here’s the intriguing part: Phoenix was one of his better races this spring, so don’t bury the No. 54 quite yet. Gibbs led late before Blaney passed him with 10 laps remaining, ultimately finishing fourth. So the opportunity is there, even if the current momentum isn’t. Four races remain, and Gibbs is suddenly 156 points behind Larson. He needs something to change immediately.
Analysis: Elliott climbs two spots here as a result of some shuffling around him, although Charlotte wasn’t exactly the kind of afternoon that would ordinarily justify much celebration. An extra pit stop to tighten a loose wheel interrupted his early progress, and a speeding penalty later cost him track position while he was running ninth. He ultimately finished 12th, ending a brief streak of consecutive top 10s and leaving him 185 points behind Larson. That’s an awfully large deficit for a former champion who still hasn’t put together the kind of sustained Chase run that would make a second title feel particularly realistic. The No. 9 has been steadier lately, sure, but steadiness alone isn’t going to solve for the title at this point in 2026. Phoenix produced a 23rd-place finish in March, and the remaining schedule isn’t getting any easier. The comeback needs to be much more convincing, and he’s capable, but the signs haven’t been there lately.
Analysis: Well, how about that — a relatively quiet Carson Hocevar afternoon. No fights, no spectacular accidents, no major controversy, just a couple of stage-point finishes and 14th at Charlotte. That probably doesn’t sound particularly exciting, but after the last several weeks, it’s not the worst development for the No. 77 team at large, though it doesn’t help him much in the championship picture. Hocevar finished eighth in Stage 1 and 10th in Stage 2, hovering around the edge of the top 10 before settling into a somewhat less remarkable finishing position. The biggest obstacle, however, continues to be execution. NASCAR Insights ranks his pit crew 26th this season, with 13 mistakes and a net loss of 110 positions on pit road. There’s been enough legitimate speed in the car to make that particularly frustrating, and Hocevar has already shown he can win in 2026. Building the rest of the operation around that capability remains a work in progress, but the arrow points upward.
Analysis: Sometimes racing is just plain cruel. Wallace was running fifth at Charlotte when Alex Bowman got loose underneath him and slammed into the No. 23, sending both cars into the outside wall and ending Wallace’s afternoon before Stage 1 was complete. He finished 37th, which is an awfully ugly way to follow three consecutive top 10s, but obviously was not evidence that his recent improvement had disappeared. NASCAR Insights still rated Wallace seventh in speed and first in restarts for the race, and the No. 23 was genuinely competitive before getting collected. The championship picture is considerably less forgiving, though. Wallace is now 185 points behind Larson after entering Charlotte 137 back, and there simply aren’t many opportunities remaining to repair that kind of damage. He finished sixth at Phoenix in March. Another afternoon like that would be welcome, but he could use considerably more.
Analysis: Finally, a top 10. Buescher’s 10th-place finish at Charlotte was his best result of The Chase and first top 10 on a non-drafting track since San Diego. Even this one required some recovery work after the No. 17 had to back up on pit road to tighten a wheel during the Stage 1 break. Buescher managed to get things pointed in the right direction again, though, and came away with at least something useful. He’s now 216 points behind Larson, so the championship conversation has become increasingly theoretical, but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing left to prove. This team has spent much of 2026 looking capable of more than the results suggest, and the final month offers one last opportunity to do something about it. Respectable is fine. At some point, though, you want a little more than fine as 2027 comes into focus.
Analysis: That’s a brutal way to end one of the more encouraging stretches of Byron’s season. Four consecutive top 10s had finally given the No. 24 some legitimate momentum after the Darlington disaster, and Charlotte looked capable of extending it. Byron was running seventh when Bowman’s accident involving Wallace also collected him, leaving the Hendrick driver with a 39th-place finish and a championship deficit that ballooned to 208 points. NASCAR Insights ranked him fifth in speed and third in defense before his race ended, so the performance certainly wasn’t as poor as the result suggests. Still, there isn’t much time left to separate bad luck from bad outcomes when The Chase standings only care about the latter. Phoenix produced a seventh in March, which gives Byron something useful to revisit; the larger championship comeback, though, has become too difficult to envision this year.
Analysis: The consistency continues. Suárez followed three consecutive 14th-place finishes with 13th at Charlotte, giving the No. 7 four straight afternoons of near-identical finishing positions. He even grabbed Stage 1 points and spent portions of Sunday running considerably better before a second stop for major adjustments interrupted the progress. It’s not nothing, but it’s also a long way from the kind of performances needed to make a serious championship push. Suárez is now 215 points behind Larson with four races remaining, and the magic that produced his remarkable Coca-Cola 600 victory at this same track in May has been largely absent throughout The Chase. There’s still time for another plot twist, technically. It would certainly be nice to see something other than 13th or 14th for a change.
Analysis: Charlotte was an improvement over Las Vegas. Preece finished 15th after a fairly anonymous afternoon in which he failed to score stage points and spent most of the race outside the top 15. That’s now consecutive Chase races without a top 10 after opening the postseason with three in the first four, and the No. 60 has slipped to last among the 16 Chase drivers, 227 points behind Larson. Phoenix at least offers a reasonable baseline after Preece finished 13th there in March, but the larger picture is becoming awfully difficult to dress up. He has already delivered a couple of finishes this season that nobody saw coming. At this point, he probably needs another one simply to make the final month interesting.