Auto racing is inherently different from stick and ball sports, and the way its championships should be decided are as well.
NASCAR’s decision to move to a knockout-style playoff format from 2014 and stick with it until 2025 drew the ire of many fans, to the point that the sanctioning body moved back to the Chase for 2026 — still a 10-race postseason, but one with no formal eliminations or points resets. Every lap of every race matters that much more, and consistent excellency over 10 weeks is the only path to the championship.
Kyle Larson’s Chase has been nothing but excellence, save for a 34th-place finish at Phoenix due to a blown tire. He’s won three Chase races and, aside from Phoenix, his worst finish in the postseason is sixth.
Sure, he didn’t have an excellent 26-race regular season. He went winless, in fact. But he was consistent enough to make the Chase and he and the No. 5 team have certainly turned the wick up over the last eight weeks.
Larson’s victory at Talladega gave him a 73-point lead over Denny Hamlin with two races to go. An advantage of 76 points or more over second place after Martinsville on Sunday would lock up Larson’s third title in six years. He’d be the first driver to clinch the Cup Series championship a week early since Matt Kenseth in 2003. Not even in the first Chase era did a driver clinch early.
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with him doing so.
No reason to clutch pearls if Larson wins title a week early
With respect to a younger generation of fans who knows nothing but a winner-take-all championship race, this is how championships should be decided in auto racing: by the sum of a larger sample size that takes into account all the wacky ways in which races can be impacted, from mechanical failures to crashes to weather.
Larson has been elite during the Chase. Hamlin and Tyler Reddick, who won a combined nine races during the regular season, haven’t been, and that’s why they both need a miracle over the next two weeks to win the championship. Christopher Bell and Chase Briscoe have both been solid in the Chase but haven’t been good enough to keep up with Larson.
If Larson clinches the championship at Martinsville, there’s nothing wrong with the points system. It’s simply a case of a driver and team straight up beating their competitors over the last eight weeks and putting themselves in a position over the first 26 to where such domination would put them in a position to clinch the title early.
Some fans have wondered what the draw of the Nov. 8 finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway would be without the storyline of an undecided championship, yet NASCAR had no problem drawing audiences prior to 2004 near season’s end, even when championships were already decided.
Homestead is a fantastic racetrack that always puts on a great race, and even if the title is locked up, fans will still have a chance to watch NASCAR’s best duke it out for a win — and without any championship implications, every driver can lay absolutely everything on the line with nothing to lose, including Larson.
At the end of the day, that’s what racing is all about.
