NASCAR Power Rankings After Kyle Larson’s Dominant Victory At Kansas Speedway

Looking back just a month, it appears that reigning NASCAR Cup Series champion Kyle Larson was down and out.

Sure, Larson qualified for the 16-driver Chase for a championship, which means he had a long shot at retaining his crown. However, Larson had gone over a year without winning a race and finished the regular season a staggering 303 points behind leader Denny Hamlin.

Fast forward a month and Larson has won two of the first four Chase races and now holds a relatively firm grasp on the points lead with just six races remaining in the season.

2026 NASCAR Cup Series Power Rankings: Week 30

We said at the start of the 10-race Chase that the points reset to begin this segment of the season provided a lot of opportunity for chaos. But even we didn’t imagine the amount of chaos to come.

After dominating the regular season, Hamlin now finds himself on the back foot a bit. Meanwhile, Larson went from dead in the water to perhaps the title favorite.

Meanwhile, it appears that a cutoff line has formed among drivers still alive for a championship, and that number is shrinking with each passing week. If Larson is able to back up his dominant showing at Kansas next week at Las Vegas, a similar track where he’s also had success, he has a real chance to put a rubber stamp on his position as the favorite.

10) Carson Hocevar

In the opening race of the Chase at Darlington, Carson Hocevar got into an on-track incident that sent former series champion Brad Keselowski spinning. It was just one a of a laundry list of incidents for Hocevar, but it may have been the one that eventually sealed his fate as a title contender.

Hocevar finished fourth in the opening stage of the race. However, during a restart in stage two, Keselowski got into him and sent him up the track and spinning into Bubba Wallace. While it’s impossible to judge intent, especially given the tight confines of restarts, it certainly felt a bit karmic.

Ultimately, Hocevar finished down in 33rd, three laps down.

Last Week: 8th NASCAR Point Standings: 11th (-150)

9) Austin Cindric

Austin Cindric was never going to win the 2026 Cup Series championship, even after making the Chase. That much isn’t a controversial. He was simply starting too far behind and hadn’t shown the speed all season to rack up race wins and stage points.

But you have to be impressed with his start to the Chase either way. Cindric has an average finish of ninth over the first four races of the Chase and was fantastic at Kansas, finishing second, just behind Larson.

He was the fast Ford driver, by far, over the weekend, and if any of that setup data can be shared with teammates Joey Logano and Ryan Blaney, it could be huge in terms of keeping them in championship contention in the next two weeks.

Last Week: UR NASCAR Point Standings: 9th (-140)

8) Chase Briscoe

Chase Briscoe’s pursuit of a championship got off to a rough start after crashes at both St. Louis and Bristol. But he had a chance to bring himself back into the fight with a win at Kansas.

After starting deep in the field, Briscoe drove his way to the front slowly but surely and became the first driver to pass Larson for the lead late in the race.

Unfortunately for Briscoe, Larson was able to pass him back just a handful of laps later and he’d ultimately get in the wall in the last few laps of the race, dropping to fourth. It’s not a bad finish for Briscoe. But failing to secure a win probably just about ends his title hopes.

Last Week: 10th NASCAR Point Standings: 8th (-123)

7) Tyler Reddick

Whatever magic Tyler Reddick and the No. 45 team had to start the season is clearly gone, and it’s impossible to say where it’s gone or whether he’s ever get it back.

Just like a week ago in Bristol, Reddick got off for a horrific start in Kansas, dropping like a rock back into the 30s and barely staying on the lead lap.

Ultimately, he and crew chief Billy Scott were able to get things headed slightly in the right direction and bring home an 11th-place finish. But it’s simply not good enough for a team that spent the first few months of the season as the title favorite.

Last Week: 7th NASCAR Point Standings: 7th (-111)

6) Ty Gibbs

Ty Gibbs needed to come to Kansas and have the type of day that Larson did if he wanted to re-enter the championship conversation.

Instead, after starting in fifth, Gibbs spent the majority of the day hanging on to the tail end of the top 10 and eventually finished all the way down in 17th, all but ending his championship hopes.

Despite was has been an unquestionably positive season for Gibbs and his development as a young driver, the Chase has shown that he’s not quite ready to contend for a Cup Series championship.

Last Week: 5th NASCAR Point Standings: 6th (-94)

5) Ryan Blaney

This ranking, and conversation, could look significantly different if Blaney had not had a late-race wreck with Hocevar a week ago that cost him at least 25 points, perhaps more. And that’s not even considering the brake failure that cost him a likely top-five finish in St. Louis.

Instead, he not only entered Kansas, a weak point for Penske, farther behind in the points, but he also started the race down in 25th after qualifying was rained out.

Blaney drove all the way up to 10th at the end stage one and seventh in stage two, but with Larson winning each stage, he ceded 15 points. Blaney then went on to finish strongly, grabbing a top-five. But again, Larson’s win meant that Blaney dropped from 51 points behind the lead to 91.

His championship hopes aren’t entirely dead. But they’re certainly on life support.

Last Week: 6th NASCAR Point Standings: 5th (-91)

4) Joey Logano

After winning a week ago at Bristol, the goal for Joey Logano this week at Kansas was clear: just try to hold serve.

Logano was aided by qualifying getting rained out, meaning he sat on the pole for Sunday’s race and finished sixth in the opening stage, which was perfectly acceptable. By the end of stage two, he had slipped to eighth, and then a flat right-front tire on the final laps of the race dropped him from 12th all the way back to 20th.

The finish didn’t completely cripple Logano’s title hopes, but it did put a large dent into them, and he’ll have to come up with some more magic at Las Vegas and Charlotte in the coming weeks to keep them alive.

Last Week: 3rd NASCAR Point Standings: 4th (-67)

3) Christopher Bell

By all accounts, Christopher Bell had a perfectly solid day on Sunday in Kansas. He started in third, ran inside the top five for the majority of the day, finishing fifth in both stages, and then took the checkered flag in sixth.

That’s a strong day.

However, when you compare it to Larson’s utterly dominant day, it doesn’t look quite as good. In fact, Bell lost 33 points to Larson on the day, and after the race, made it abundantly clear that he’s going to need to win multiple races down the stretch to fight for a championship.

Last Week: 4th NASCAR Point Standings: 3rd (-50)

2) Denny Hamlin

Like Bell, Denny Hamlin had an extremely strong day on Sunday. The Joe Gibbs Racing start finished second in the opening stage, third in stage two, and then third in the race.

In almost any other instance, that’s a majorly successful points day. However, Larson is the measuring stick at the moment, and Hamlin lost another large chunk of points – 24 to be exact – to his championship rival.

Larson has now made up more than 80 points on Hamlin over the first four races of the Chase, and that trend will have to change, and fast, if Hamlin wants to regain the top spot in the points.

Last Week: 2nd NASCAR Point Standings: 2nd (-28)

1) Kyle Larson

As we mentioned a week ago when he took the lead in the points, Larson was a massive beneficiary of the points reset prior to the Chase, which saw him make up over 200 points to Hamlin in the blink of an eye.

However, everybody knew the rules going in, and Larson and company have more than delivered on their end to start the Chase.

The Hendrick Motorsports star has an average finish of 2.25 in the four Chase races thus far, including two victories, and has a chance to take a firm grasp on the championship if he can come out next week in Las Vegas and repeated what he did in Kansas.

Last Week: 1st NASCAR Point Standings: 1st