After a season dominated by Toyota in the victory column, with Toyota winning more than half the races, it appears Chevy is destined to claim the driver’s championship this year, barring a massive collapse from Hendrick Motorsports driver Kyle Larson.

With a 73-point cushion over the next driver in point standings, Larson appears likely to take his third crown after an incredible Chase performance where he has been lights out. To put things in perspective, his finishes in the Chase have been:

— 5^th
— 1^st
— 2^nd
— 1^st
— 2^nd
— 6^th
— 34^th
— 1^st

That’s an average of 6.5, and if you throw out the one bad race he had in 34^th, Larson has averaged a finish of 2.5 in the remaining 7 races.

Still, Kyle knows this sport can throw everyone a curveball, and is not celebrating until the math is official.

“I still feel a lot of pressure. It’s so easy for the points to swing, and you’ve seen that throughout The Chase. A team or driver can have a great day and score maximum points, and we could have a day like we had at Phoenix [Raceway], and boom, they’re right back in it. So, I do feel a lot of pressure. Ultimately, I’d love to go to Martinsville and gain the points I need to lock it up, but if we can’t do that, I still want to have a solid day and give ourselves as much of a cushion as possible heading into Homestead. We’ve done a super good job of staying focused over the past couple of months of The Chase, and we can’t let those thoughts creep into our minds. My goal is to stay locked in and stay on offense.”

After years of justifiable grumbling from fans about the playoff system as it has existed in recent years, with multiple resets and cutoff rounds, and cries that the champions crowned in recent years weren’t truly deserving due to the one-race finale, change has come to NASCAR in a big way.

Starting with the 2026 season, the sport is returning to its (recent) past. No, we’re not getting a full season championship with no points resets, like we had from 1975 through 2003, but we got as close we were ever going to get — a return to a (slightly altered) version of the 10-race Chase that launched back in 2004 (and similar setups in the O’Reilly and Truck series as well).

Championship weekends are supposed to be celebratory. Fun. Thrilling.

While the losing team’s fans may be upset, they can still appreciate a game well-played between competitors.

2025 Championship Weekend was a whole different vibe for NASCAR, and not in a good way.

With nonstop talk going into the weekend about the legitimacy of the one-race battle for the title, we knew the results were going to be looked at under a microscope.

To be frank, this weekend at Phoenix had a funereal feel to many fans, who saw this as the end of an era where changes that have been implemented have had unintended consequences that have hurt the sport’s integrity — and as the weekend played out, we saw two more heartbreaking examples of why this playoff format needs to end and a major reset is needed for the sport in 2026.

Friday Miracle from Heim, but disappointment for Zilisch on Saturday

To start the weekend, disaster was averted on Friday courtesy of a late 7-wide banzai move by Corey Heim that allowed him to claim a title that rightfully should have already been his. If he hadn’t won the championship due to late cautions, it would’ve been a travesty, as Heim had perhaps the most dominant season ever in the series’ history. So, we got through one day without a calamity.

But then our luck ran out.