Kyle Larson clinched his third NASCAR Cup Series championship at Homestead-Miami Speedway on Sunday with most of the race still to run, and his crew chief had to tell him.
"They've declared it," Cliff Daniels said on the radio during the caution that ended the first stage, according to NASCAR's account of the radio traffic. "We've got it." Larson asked whether it was really over. "That was a little anticlimactic, but that's cool," he said. "Good job, guys!"
Then team owner Rick Hendrick came on. "Congratulations," he said. "Now you can run the wall." Larson did, more than once, in Hendrick Motorsports' No. 5 Chevrolet. He cut a right rear tire against it, pitted on lap 119, fell to 17th and finished 12th. Ryan Blaney of Team Penske won the race.
“Oh my gosh, I feel like I already have been, but I'll try to find another gear here.”
Kyle Larson2026 NASCAR Cup Series champion, No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports ChevroletVideo: NASCAR Media
"I got the word that we had clinched it. I started driving like an idiot," Larson said. "I'm more mad at myself."
“I thought I had to run third to get the points I needed.”
Kyle Larson2026 NASCAR Cup Series champion, No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports ChevroletVideo: NASCAR Media
It is his second title in a row. He is the first driver to win back-to-back Cup championships since Hendrick's Jimmie Johnson won five straight from 2006 through 2010, and the 11th to win at least three, NASCAR said. It is Hendrick Motorsports' 16th Cup championship.
Larson came to the finale 67 points ahead of Christopher Bell and 70 ahead of Denny Hamlin, Joe Gibbs Racing teammates and the only drivers left who could catch him. Running fourth when the first stage ended put the title out of their reach. He finished 49 points ahead of Bell and 56 ahead of Hamlin, in NASCAR's unofficial standings.
Bell, who won one race this season, finished fourth. "Obviously disappointed we didn't win more," he said in NASCAR's race report. Hamlin led a race-high 87 laps and hit the wall chasing the win late, finishing sixth. "Every way you can measure the year, it's been really, really good," he said. "Congrats to the 5 team."
The title came out of what Larson called, for Hendrick, "statistically probably one of our worst years." He won three races, all of them in the Chase, NASCAR's 10-race playoff. Tyler Reddick of 23XI Racing won six this season and Hamlin four, according to NASCAR's unofficial points report, and both finished behind him. The format, Larson said, "really takes consistency."
At the team's low point late that summer, Larson stood up in a debrief with Hendrick's drivers and crew chiefs, Hendrick said. "Listen, nobody can beat us if we work together," Hendrick remembered him saying. Larson, Hendrick said, "hadn't won a race and we'd only won two."
“Whether it happens now or next year or whatever, I know we're eventually going to get to where we want to be.”
Kyle Larson2026 NASCAR Cup Series champion, No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports ChevroletVideo: NASCAR Media
He gave the credit to Daniels, his crew chief for all three titles. Asked whether the team would be champion without its midseason trouble, Daniels said, "I don't think so." He said he thought Larson had run more simulator hours than any Hendrick driver this year, "which is a totally new page for him."
“If I wasn't with Cliff Daniels, I wouldn't have a single championship.”
Kyle Larson2026 NASCAR Cup Series champion, No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports ChevroletVideo: NASCAR Media
Blaney won from fourth on a restart with eight laps left, passing Reddick with two laps to go and winning by 0.314 seconds. A loose wheel had sent him to the back of the field after the first stage. Reddick was second, William Byron third and Bubba Wallace fifth.
Jeff Gordon, Hendrick's vice chairman, won four Cup titles of his own with the team. One of the first things he told Larson on Sunday, he said, was "number three, one more to go." Of Larson catching him, Gordon said: "He's going to pass me. I already came to that conclusion."