Quite a few NASCAR Cup Series playoff drivers had "good points days" in Sunday afternoon's Hollywood Casino 400 at Kansas Speedway, race number four of 10 on the 2026 postseason schedule.
On paper, that is. The reality is what Kyle Petty kept repeating during the post-race show: "They all lost."
Every single one of them lost ground to Hendrick Motorsports' Kyle Larson, who entered the race with his first points lead of the year, a one-point advantage over Joe Gibbs Racing's Denny Hamlin. Hamlin had been the points leader since June, and while he was still the leader following the postseason reset, his lead shrunk significantly to begin the "Chase" because of that reset.
With six races remaining on the postseason schedule, there are still 456 points on the table, and all 15 playoff drivers not named Larson are still within 187 points of the lead. But while nobody has been mathematically eliminated, and it will take at least another two races to change that, there is a strong case to be made that the championship hopes for quite a few of these drivers are already gone.
In total, it's probably over for these 10 drivers.
The 3 most obvious
Daniel Suarez, Chris Buescher, and Ryan Preece have a combined best finish of 10th place through the first four races of the playoffs. They are the bottom three drivers in the standings, with Preece leading the way at 173 points behind. These three drivers provide the ultimate empowerment for the NASCAR fans who have long argued that the Chase should consist of 12 or even 10 drivers, not 16.
The 4 we thought could contend
This group is surprisingly loaded, even with six races remaining on the schedule.
Tyler Reddick looked like he was going to coast to the regular season championship after winning at Kansas Speedway in April. But he leaves Kansas in September with the same win tally (five) as he had 21 races ago. He's 111 points behind Larson, but quite frankly, that shouldn't be a surprise. He was not nearly as dominant as his five wins in nine races made him seem, after leading more than 10 laps in just three of those victories. Some form of regression to the mean was expected.
Chase Briscoe looked like he could beat Larson on Sunday at Kansas, which would have put him 81 points behind. But the 40-point swing from first to second dropped him to 121 back, and he then dropped two more spots. Having won just once so far this year, he's simply not going to go on the kind of hot streak that lets him rally from 123 back.
Then there's the Hendrick duo of Chase Elliott and William Byron, who have clearly not benefited from whatever Larson and the No. 5 team suddenly have going for them. Elliott, who is 161 points behind, scored only his third top 10 finish since early May by finishing eighth on Sunday, and Byron, who is 158 back, is now on a win drought that is almost as long as the one Larson just ended earlier this month. The reality is that Hendrick is down to one contender.
The other 3
Let's be honest. Nobody truly expected Austin Cindric, Bubba Wallace, or Carson Hocevar to contend for the championship, but they weren't the obvious picks to finish at the bottom either. And they likely won't.
Team Penske has historically excelled in the playoffs, winning three of the past four championships, and Cindric finished a surprising second on Sunday to vault him to ninth in the standings. He could definitely be in line for a career-best finish, but at 140 points behind, that career-best finish won't be a championship in 2026.
Wallace's speed has exceeded both his and the No. 23 23XI Racing team's execution all year, and they have actually executed well to begin the postseason. He has the second-best worst finish of any playoff driver in the playoffs, but with nothing higher than a seventh place finish, he's still only tied with Cindric for ninth in points.
And Hocevar is, well, Hocevar. It feels like NASCAR fans want him to be a contender to justify the attention and the hype he continues to get on a weekly basis, but he's still yet to break into that tier, or even the tier below it. He came close to notching his first career non-superspeedway win at Bristol, but we all saw how that ended for him. He is 11th, 150 points behind.
That leaves us with Larson, Hamlin (-26), Christopher Bell (-50), Joey Logano (-67), Ryan Blaney (-91), and Ty Gibbs (-94). But how many of those drivers are truly championship threats with six races remaining on the 2026 schedule? Playoff race number five is the South Point 400, which is set to be shown live on USA Network from Las Vegas Motor Speedway starting at 5:30 p.m. ET on Sunday, October 4. Hamlin has won two races in a row at Las Vegas.
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