Entering Saturday night's Bass Pro Shops Night Race at Bristol Motor Speedway, we discussed eight drivers whose chances to win the 2026 NASCAR Cup Series championship were already effectively gone.
Despite a couple of strong runs from those drivers, led by Carson Hocevar's third place finish (which was, of course, far from the highlight of his night), we're still convinced that none of the eight have any chance of winning the title. Just two are within 115 points of the lead as it is.
And it might be time to add a few more names to that list.
Three other drivers have seen their title hopes slip away in recent weeks. All of them have proven that they can get hot, but if it doesn't happen soon (as in, starting this weekend), they might want to turn their attention to 2027.
Ryan Blaney, Team Penske
Gateway and Bristol were two tracks where Ryan Blaney needed to capitalize to bolster his championship chances. Instead, a brake rotor issue knocked him out at Gateway, and the Hocevar crash knocked him out at Bristol.
He's 52 points out of the lead, which is not an insurmountable deficit, but he and Team Penske have been far from the class of the field on 1.5-mile ovals, which are set to host three consecutive races. He should be strong at Phoenix Raceway and Martinsville Speedway, and he's proven to be an ace at Talladega Superspeedway, but the championship is probably out of reach for him with another bad result.
Tyler Reddick, 23XI Racing
Take out the first nine races of the 2026 season, and Tyler Reddick has had largely a mediocre year (10th in points, to be exact), much like he did a year ago when he went winless. After winning five times in those nine races, he lost a 129-point lead in the point standings and fell all the way to fourth, and he hasn't won since April.
While he moved up to third in the regular season finale at Daytona International Speedway and backed that up with a third place finish in the playoff opener at Darlington Raceway, that momentum was short-lived, as he placed 25th and 18th at Gateway and Bristol, respectively.
Even when the No. 45 team was winning races left and right to start the year, they weren't leading a lot of laps. Now 61 points behind, Reddick effectively needs to find lightning in a bottle for a second time in seven months to have a chance to get back in the fight.
Chase Briscoe, Joe Gibbs Racing
Like Blaney, Chase Briscoe has suffered back-to-back DNFs after a solid playoff opener at Darlington. He's now 87 points behind, and while he had a strong second half of the regular season to move up to fifth in points after a historically rough start, the fact that he has only won once this year leads me to believe there's a very, very slim chance that any "hot" streak from now until the end of the year would actually be enough to vault him all the way back into contention.
All things considered, it's beginning to look like the title fight is between the Joe Gibbs Racing trio of Denny Hamlin (-1), Christopher Bell (-17), and Ty Gibbs (-42), along with Hendrick Motorsports' Kyle Larson (new points leader) and Team Penske's Joey Logano (-16).
Bell, Larson, and Logano have won the three playoff races so far at Darlington, Gateway, and Bristol, respectively.
Kansas Speedway is set to host the fourth playoff race of 2026 this Sunday, September 27, with USA Network set to provide live coverage of the Hollywood Casino 400 beginning at 3:00 p.m. ET.
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