NASCAR is never escaping the 'rigged' allegations after Talladega finish

After a disastrous day at Phoenix Raceway made the 2026 NASCAR Cup Series championship feel like far less of a foregone conclusion for Kyle Larson, he bounced back at Talladega Superspeedway for his first career superspeedway victory in 59 tries.

And the way it happened certainly had social media talking.

Larson led Sunday's 188-lap YellaWood 500 with one lap remaining around the four-turn, 2.66-mile (4.281-kilometer) before losing all of his momentum on the back straightaway and being shuffled back to the middle lane in 11th.

But if you think he "choked" away yet another potential drafting race victory, the 10 drivers who passed him totally reset the meaning of that particular word by putting together one of the greatest partings of a "red sea" since Moses.

The driver of the No. 5 Chevrolet took advantage in turns three and four and even into the tri-oval/frontstretch, and the one driver whom none of the other championship contenders could afford to see win the race won the race.

Even going into the tri-oval, he was only eighth. He still won.

Did Chevrolet let Kyle Larson win?

Instead of leaving Talladega with 20-ish-point lead, Larson owns a 73-point lead over Joe Gibbs Racing's Denny Hamlin, one of the drivers who temporarily passed him on the final lap. There are now just two races remaining on the playoff schedule and thus 152 points still up for grabs.

Given the pre-race discussions about the Chevrolet drivers and teams, not just from the Hendrick Motorsports camp, helping Larson, the lone Chevrolet driver remaining in the championship battle, there were immediately accusations of race manipulation.

As impressive as the comeback looked, the fact that Larson made up all those spots after losing literally all of his momentum in such a short stretch is something that has left many at a loss for real answers.

Chevrolet swept the top six spots and took nine of the top 11, with the lone exceptions being Hamlin in eighth and Front Row Motorsports' Todd Gilliland in seventh. That list of Chevrolet drivers doesn't include Richard Childress Racing's Austin Hill, who legitimately appeared to be out of fuel when he fell from second to 14th.

NASCAR claimed afterward that they checked the data from all of the Chevrolet drivers Larson passed on the final lap and confirmed that they were not simply slowing down for him to win.

On the flip side, would they ever actually admit it if there were any form of race manipulation? Would they really want to deal with an entire omelet on their face?

That's the question many are asking. Having said that, we have seen others penalized for race manipulation before. But on the flip side of that, wouldn't that make NASCAR look equally as bad by effectively admitting it happened here too?

Was Kyle Larson's win even legal?

But even if you take NASCAR's word for it here, there's also the fact that Larson went below the double yellow line to make his charge back to the front.

He was clearly not forced below the line, yet the images show us relatively clearly that he went below the forbidden line and into the restricted area to advance his position.

This one doesn't even really feel like a conspiracy theory, given NASCAR's past precedent for penalizing drivers for doing the same or similar. It feels like NASCAR fans simply calling out inconsistency that is made blatantly by obvious by real, non-AI-generated images available for the world to see.

And for that reason, it also feels like NASCAR could simply want to avoid the egg on their face by not penalizing the race winner in a potentially championship-defining moment. It feels like the lesser of two evils to let slide what has previously been characterized as a clear violation.

It's not the first time NASCAR fans have had questions

Given the nature by which Larson won the 2025 championship at Phoenix Raceway, you cannot blame fans for having questions here, because it's not the first time that controversial decisions have gone his way in key moments.

On a day when NASCAR held the caution flag several times for various tire issues throughout the race, they threw one with just over two laps remaining when fellow Hendrick driver William Byron blew a tire.

At that point, Denny Hamlin was running away with the championship-deciding race. But the caution flag led to a pit stop sequence before the overtime restart, and Larson came out ahead of Hamlin after opting for two tires as opposed to Hamlin's four. He won the championship without leading a lap of a race that Hamlin had dominated.

This year at Phoenix, NASCAR was also inconsistent when it came to throwing the yellows for tire issues. So it's entirely possible that it was just a simple example of NASCAR's trademark consistent inconsistency.

But the fact that it's Larson and Hendrick who always seem to benefit? Talladega proved yet again that everybody has their own theories on that.

At the end of the day, no amount of yelling and screaming on social media is going to do anything about the outcome of the race. The result is official, Larson is the winner after a memorable drive from P11 to P1, and it would take a collapse of gargantuan proportions from the No. 5 team over the season's final two races for him to not win the 2026 championship.

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