Kyle Larson Took Control of the NASCAR Chase. Denny Hamlin Gets His Best Chance to Take It Back.

Kyle Larson spent four races turning a 55-point deficit into control of the NASCAR Cup Series championship.

It took him one afternoon at Kansas to make that control feel almost intimidating.

He won Stage 1.

He won Stage 2.

He recorded the fastest lap.

Then, after Chase Briscoe took the lead late and briefly threatened to spoil everything, Larson chased him back down and passed him with seven laps remaining.

Race win.

Seventy-six points.

Everything NASCAR's scoring system would allow him to take.

Denny Hamlin finished third.

On almost any other Sunday, that would have been a good day.

At Kansas, it cost him 25 points.

Larson arrived with a one-point advantage over Hamlin in the Chase standings. He left with 26.

Four races into NASCAR's revived 10-race Chase, Larson has finished fifth, first, second and first. His average finish is 2.25, the best opening four-race stretch of any postseason driver since NASCAR introduced the Chase format in 2004.

The championship suddenly looks as if it is beginning to bend toward the No. 5 Chevrolet.

But NASCAR isn't going somewhere neutral next.

It is going to Las Vegas.

And if there is one place where Hamlin can reasonably look at a 26-point deficit and believe it might disappear, this is it.

He has won the last two Cup races there.

Twenty-Six Points Can Disappear Quickly

Larson understands the arithmetic better than anyone.

After Kansas, he wasn't talking like a driver who believed the championship had been secured.

He was talking about engines.

"I only have a 26, I think, point lead on Denny," Larson said. "That could be swallowed up in a hurry."

Then he explained exactly how.

Hamlin could produce the kind of 76-point afternoon Larson just had. Larson could suffer an early mechanical failure. One race could turn the entire championship upside down.

That is the strange thing about the lead Larson built at Kansas.

It is both substantial and fragile.

Christopher Bell is already 50 points behind Larson. Joey Logano is 67 back. Ryan Blaney is 91 behind.

For much of the field, Kansas created the first genuine sense of urgency in this Chase. Bell suggested afterward that winning multiple races might now be necessary just to have a chance.

Hamlin's situation is different.

He doesn't need a miracle.

He needs one Larson-sized Sunday.

And he is going to the track where he has been better than anyone recently.

Hamlin Owns the Recent History

Las Vegas Motor Speedway has belonged to Hamlin for the last year.

He won the fall race there in 2025.

Then he returned this March and did it again.

That second victory wasn't clean.

Hamlin was caught speeding on pit road at the end of the first stage and had to recover from the penalty. He did. By the final restart, the No. 11 Toyota was back where it needed to be.

Hamlin took the lead and won.

He scored 70 points that afternoon.

Larson finished seventh.

Another victory Sunday would make Hamlin only the second driver to win three consecutive Cup races at Las Vegas, joining Jimmie Johnson, who did it from 2005 through 2007.

More importantly, Hamlin's Vegas success isn't an isolated statistical curiosity.

It fits the larger pattern of his season.

Through the six 1.5-mile races run before this weekend, Hamlin has finished first, fourth, second, third, third and third.

Average finish: 2.7.

Nobody in the Chase has been close to that level of consistency on intermediate tracks.

Kansas was supposed to be one of the places where Hamlin could challenge Larson.

He did.

He finished third.

Larson simply destroyed everybody anyway.

Las Vegas gives Hamlin another chance.

Except Larson Is Also Great Here

There is one problem with declaring Las Vegas a Denny Hamlin track.

Kyle Larson might have an even stronger claim to it.

Larson has three Cup victories at Las Vegas.

He has led 881 laps there, more than any driver in the track's history.

Among drivers with more than four starts, his 8.9 average finish is the best.

Since joining Hendrick Motorsports, Larson has finished first or second in six of his 11 Las Vegas starts.

And during the Next Gen era, the difference in raw domination is startling.

Larson has led 657 laps at Las Vegas.

Hamlin has led 232.

Hamlin owns the last two trophies.

Larson has spent more time controlling the races.

That is what makes Sunday's South Point 400 more interesting than a normal championship-leader-versus-challenger story.

Neither driver is arriving at the other's track.

Both have reasons to believe it belongs to them.

Kansas Changed the Shape of the Chase

Four races ago, the championship looked very different.

Hamlin entered the Chase as the top seed.

Larson began 55 points behind him.

Then the No. 5 started finishing near the front every week.

Fifth.

First.

Second.

First.

By the time Larson crossed the line at Kansas, a 55-point deficit had become a 26-point advantage.

That is an 81-point swing in four races.

The revived Chase format was designed to reward exactly this kind of sustained excellence. There is no elimination reset waiting to erase Larson's work. No winner-take-all finale where an entire season can be reduced to one race.

Points accumulate.

Bad weekends remain bad weekends.

Great weekends remain great weekends.

Kansas mattered because Larson gets to keep all 76 of those points.

But that same logic is why Las Vegas matters so much to Hamlin.

There are six races remaining.

The championship isn't decided.

But the number of opportunities to produce a large swing is shrinking.

Hamlin may never get a more inviting one than this.

Hamlin Isn't Panicking

There is another reason the 26-point gap hasn't produced surrender inside the No. 11 camp.

Hamlin doesn't believe Larson can keep doing this.

Nobody should.

A 2.25 average finish over four races is extraordinary.

Maintaining it across 10 would be something else entirely.

Larson has effectively forced the rest of NASCAR to wait for regression — a bad pit stop, a flat tire, a mechanical problem, a crash he didn't cause, or simply an afternoon when the car isn't capable of running at the front.

Hamlin doesn't necessarily need Larson to collapse.

He needs Larson to become normal.

That is a much more realistic proposition.

The problem is that Hamlin must capitalize when it happens.

At Kansas, Larson gave him almost nothing.

When Briscoe passed Larson late, there was briefly an opening. Had Briscoe won, Larson's advantage over Hamlin would have been dramatically smaller.

Instead Larson adjusted his line, managed his tires, caught Briscoe and took the lead back.

The difference between a relatively tight championship and a 26-point margin was seven laps.

That is what Hamlin is racing against right now.

Not simply Larson's speed.

Larson's ability to turn weekends that look vulnerable back into maximum damage.

The Halfway Point

Sunday is Race 5 of 10.

When the South Point 400 ends, the NASCAR Chase will officially be halfway finished.

That doesn't make Las Vegas a must-win race for Hamlin.

But it may be the clearest opportunity he gets to change the tone of the championship.

A Hamlin victory with strong stage points could erase much of the deficit.

A Larson victory could do something more significant than add another trophy.

It could begin separating this championship into two groups: Kyle Larson, and everybody trying to catch him.

The rest of the Chase field already understands the danger.

Bell is 50 points back.

Logano is 67 behind.

Blaney is 91 back.

Hamlin remains the one driver close enough to Larson that a single exceptional afternoon could realistically redraw the top of the standings.

And Las Vegas is the place where he has produced exceptional afternoons twice in a row.

Two Aces, One Track

There is something appropriately Las Vegas about the matchup.

Larson arrives holding the better hand.

Hamlin arrives at a table where he keeps winning.

One has the championship lead.

The other has the last two Vegas trophies.

Larson has led more laps here than anyone in history.

Hamlin has been NASCAR's best 1.5-mile driver this season.

One week ago, Larson showed exactly how quickly a championship gap can expand.

This weekend, Hamlin gets the opportunity to demonstrate the opposite.

Twenty-six points.

Six races after Sunday.

Two drivers who have spent the season proving that a good finish sometimes isn't good enough when the other one is nearly perfect.

Kyle Larson took control of the NASCAR Chase at Kansas.

Now Denny Hamlin gets the track where he has his best chance to take some of it back.

Dream Sports Network