Sunday's Great American Getaway 400 at Pocono Raceway was the first race since the mid-May race at Kansas Speedway that 23XI Racing's Tyler Reddick entered without the guarantee of leaving as the points leader.
He entered with a 51-point lead over Joe Gibbs Racing's Denny Hamlin. Following an offseason rules change, there are now 76 points, not 61, on the table for each driver in a standard three-stage race, with race winners being awarded 55 points, not 40, and the winners of stages one and two being awarded 10 each. The fastest lap award is worth one point.
Drivers who finish 36th (or worse) score just one point, meaning that there's the potential for a 75-point swing between any two drivers in any given race.
But Hamlin, for the first time in his 22-year career, extended his win streak to three at Pocono, and he trimmed Reddick's lead to 19. Before winning at Nashville Superspeedway and Michigan International Speedway, Hamlin trailed Reddick by 122 and 97 points, respectively.
Reddick finished sixth at Nashville, as his massive wreck didn't come until the checkered flag, and then he suffered his first official DNF of the season at Michigan International Speedway. He had not finished lower than 15th all year before that wreck.
Still, a runner-up finish behind Hamlin at Pocono wasn't enough to prevent his lead from dropping by 32 more points, and now the regular season championship battle has gone from what seemed like a foregone conclusion to a total toss-up.
NASCAR regular season championship battle far from over
Reddick's lead grew to as large as 129 points following the early May race at Watkins Glen International, and it has dropped in all four races since. Reddick is the only driver who has led the point standings at any point this season, as he became the first driver in the 78-year history of the Cup Series to win each of a season's first three races.
Hamlin has notably been the championship betting favorite for the past several weeks, even though he had just one win before his Nashville victory while Reddick earned five wins in the season's first nine races, and the reason why is obvious.
Even with one win compared to Reddick's five, Hamlin had unquestionably been the more dominant driver. The No. 11 Toyota had the speed to win at least three of four more races before Hamlin even got his second win of the year, and he's still on pace to blow away his previous career-high in laps led for a single season.
For instance, he led 131 laps at Kansas but finished fourth. Reddick led just 10 and won, thanks to a timely late caution.
Now the speed is starting to translate to wins for Hamlin and the No. 11 team, and he's ninth on the all-time wins list with 64 victories. Of those 64 wins, 33 have come since 2019, following his winless 2018 season.
The regular season championship battle, which almost seemed over when Reddick grew his lead to over 100 points with his fifth victory of the year at Kansas, is now very much in play with 10 races remaining before the 10-race "Chase" postseason.
NASCAR regular season championship massive under new playoff format
Regular season points are incredibly important under the new postseason format, as the top 16 drivers advance to the playoffs; there is no more "win and in".
The points with which each of the 16 playoff drivers are set to begin the postseason, following the reset after the regular season finale at Daytona International Speedway in August, are predetermined, as there are no more playoff points for race wins or stage wins.
The regular season champion is set to be awarded 100 bonus points, meaning he is set to start the playoffs with 2,100 points, while the runner-up is set to be awarded 75 and start with 2,075.
In other words, the difference between winning the regular season championship and finishing second is the equivalent of a 50-point swing over the course of that 10-race postseason, which could prove massive when it comes time to crown a champion.
Beyond Reddick and Hamlin, it seems unlikely that anybody else will emerge as a regular season title threat. While Hamlin once stated that the battle was for second, perhaps the real battle is for third.
Ryan Blaney is third, 165 points back, but Team Penske have been underperforming as a whole all season. Blaney's one win came at Phoenix Raceway in March, and while Team Penske have shown the ability to turn things around late in the season in years past, they most definitely took advantage of the knockout playoff format to do so. Blaney clawing back 165 points against Reddick and 146 points against Hamlin simply doesn't seem realistic.
Just two other drivers are within 200 points of the lead.
The 2026 NASCAR Cup Series season's 17th race is the inaugural Anduril 250, which is set to be shown live from the new Qualcomm Circuit, more commonly known as the Coronado Street Course, on Naval Base Coronado in San Diego, California. Live coverage is set to begin on Amazon Prime Video at 4:00 p.m. ET on Sunday, June 21.
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