About Our Ads Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Kyle Larson opened the 2026 NASCAR Cup Series season with an increasingly long winless streak and ended the year with a championship.
Larson repeated as champion, securing the title in the NASCAR Cup Series Championship Race on Nov. 8 at Homestead-Miami Speedway.
The Hendrick Motorsports driver secured the title after a fourth-place finish in Stage 1, then went on to finish 12th in the race.
Ryan Blaney passed Tyler Reddick coming to the white flag and held him off to win the season finale.
Here are the winners and losers from the NASCAR Homestead championship race.
FINAL CUP POINTS: NASCAR points standings, final Cup Series points update after Homestead race
Homestead-Miami Speedway is one of NASCAR's best and most entertaining tracks. Drivers can use multiple lanes, and tire wear factors into the racing.
The Cup Series put on another excellent finish at Homestead, with five drivers battling for the win in the final eight laps.
William Byron kept the lead on the final restart, then ceded the lead to Reddick as Denny Hamlin mixed into the top three. Hamlin scraped the wall and moved out of the picture. Christopher Bell made a move for the lead, but couldn't get there. Blaney did get there, making a late pass of Reddick coming to the white flag to win the race.
NASCAR can decide whatever it wants regarding the championship format. But no matter the format, Homestead must remain as the season finale.
Larson locked up the 2026 Cup Series championship well before damage to the diffuser on the No. 5 Chevrolet affected the rest of his day.
He finished fourth in the first stage; combined with Bell's third and Hamlin's fifth, Larson's points magic number hit zero.
It's the first time that a Cup championship was clinched at the end of a stage, which was not introduced under the old playoff system until a decade ago.
The diffuser damage didn't outright derail Larson's day, but he ran outside the top 10 for most of the rest of the race as he and the No. 5 team worked around the issue to improve the car's downforce.
Larson's official championship margin of victory was 49 points ahead of Bell.
Joe Gibbs Racing had the pre-Chase championship favorite and three other major contenders going into the fall.
But after a disappointing fall for the JGR group, Larson had a stress-free final two weeks to coast to the title.
The Homestead race was a microcosm of the Chase, with Bell and Hamlin on the periphery of the race for the win in the final laps between Reddick, Blaney and Byron. Ty Gibbs had a late pit issue and finished 11th.
Polesitter Chase Briscoe, already eliminated from championship contention, suffered an engine failure just before the end of the first stage and finished 39th.
As teammate Larson won his third championship, Chase Elliott again had a decent day ruined by pit-road issues.
Elliott started the final stage at the rear of the field as result of a pit-road penalty for too many crew members over the wall too soon after making contact with a couple cars, then was lapped under green before finishing 22nd.
Even if the No. 9 team had a clean stop, Elliott was moving between eighth and 14th all day in what has become too much of a norm in the second half of 2026. Elliott contended for the win last week at Martinsville before finishing second, but that has been a rare instance since May.
Larson is the No. 1 driver at Hendrick Motorsports and has been for quite some time, as NASCAR's most popular driver languishes in good-but-not-great territory for another season.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: NASCAR Homestead winners, losers as Kyle Larson wins title, Joe Gibbs Racing disappoints
Source: Sports
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