Kyle Larson was running 14th at Las Vegas Motor Speedway when he pitted on lap 34 to make an adjustment to his right front. He came out of the pits a lap behind the leaders, and no one expected him to make a comeback. Not even the No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet driver and his crew chief expected that they would finish the race in second.
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While Larson has shown unreal consistency, the Vegas race was proof of his championship caliber. But it was also supposed to be a sign of other OEMs catching up to Toyota, which has been dominant all season long. Dale Jr., however, believes that Larson’s performances in the Chase have little to do with Chevrolet making gains on Toyota.
“Has Chevrolet or Ford closed the gap on Toyota? I don’t think they have,” Dale Jr. said on the Dale Jr. Download podcast. “Larson has something (that) is working.”
While Dale Jr. doesn’t believe that the Chevys have closed the gap to Toyota, Larson has been the most consistent driver in the Chase, with an average finish of 2.2, with a worst finish of fifth in the first Chase race at Darlington. And as the JR Motorsports owner pointed out, it’s more Larson than Chevy, because none of his HMS teammates have been able to match him.
Chase Elliott is currently 13th in the championship. William Byron is one place above him in 12th. Elliott has one DNF and two top-ten finishes in five Chase races. Byron began the Chase with a DNF in Darlington, and ever since, he has consistently finished in the top ten. His fourth-place finish at Gateway was his best finish in the last five races.
While Larson has shown serious gains, by HMS’ lofty standards, Elliott and Byron are underperforming. But it wasn’t too long ago that Elliott had two wins for HMS in 2026, and Larson had none. So what’s changed?
“Cliff(Daniels, Larson’s crew chief) said at Charlotte, they hit the reset button,” said Dale Jr. “They spent all off season running sim, trying to figure out how to take what they had last year, and make it better, and they put this idea together, put it on the racetrack, and it wasn’t producing results. They went all the way up to almost the end of May before they said abort.”
At the rain-curtailed Coca-Cola 600 earlier this season, the same race that Dale Jr. said the No. 5 team hit the reset button. Larson finished fifth. He now returns to that same track with a 40-point lead over Denny Hamlin in the championship.
Whether the Chevys have made gains on the Toyota or not is still open to interpretation, but it’s very clear that Larson now has the upper hand in the championship. Unless someone can replicate the run he had in the five Chase races over the next five races. But even for that to work, they would need Larson to have a major blunder to balance the odds.
While Larson continues to mount a challenge on the dominant Toyotas, the third OEM isn’t really sure if they are losing or gaining. Ford would have seen Joey Logano’s victory in Bristol as the sign that they were back.
But as soon as they hit the intermediate track, they were trailing the No. 5 team and the JGR Toyotas.
Logano was within 16 points of Kyle Larson after winning in Bristol. Now he is 71 points back, and the next race is the last intermediate track, another track where Team Penske’s three-time Cup champ is likely to struggle.
Denny Hamlin, Kyle Larson and Joey Logano are the three favorites from each of their OEMs. While Larson has been Chevy’s best performer, Hamlin hasn’t been the best Toyota in the Chase. Apart from the 3rd-place finish in Kansas, Hamlin hasn’t been himself. Chase Briscoe, on the other hand, has had two solid races in the No. 19 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota. Briscoe almost won in Kansas, and in Vegas he swept all three stages to take 75 points.
For Ford, Ryan Blaney hasn’t had the best Chase. Two back-to-back DNFs played a huge role in that. Although the 2023 Cup winner is making a comeback, with consecutive fifth-place finishes in Kansas and Vegas, Austin Cindric, the lowest-ranked Penske driver, has been the most consistent Ford, yet far off the Toyotas and Larson. Cindric has picked up 100 points in the last two races, yet he’s too far away for either Larson or the Toyotas to consider him a threat.