Kyle Larson wins Talladega at last. The Hendrick Motorsports driver, who arrived at Talladega Superspeedway on Sunday 0-for-48 at drafting tracks in his NASCAR Cup Series career, charged from outside the top ten on the final lap of overtime to win the YellaWood 500 by 0.041 seconds over his teammate William Byron — his first victory at Talladega, his third win of this Chase, and the 35th Cup win of his career. Ricky Stenhouse Jr., who led into the final feet, finished third. With two races left in the season, Larson's points lead over Denny Hamlin has ballooned from five points at the start of the day to 73.
The final lap: first, eleventh, first again
Larson took the white flag in the lead, then lost it almost immediately. Austin Hill's pushes down the backstretch shoved him out of line and, by NBC Sports' account, he had fallen to 11th as the field funnelled into the final mile — a position that, at Talladega, usually means watching someone else celebrate. What saved him was the oldest truth of superspeedway racing: the leaders' drafting help fell apart at exactly the wrong moment. Ross Chastain latched onto Larson's bumper, the top lines became disjointed off Turn 4, and Larson surged back down the frontstretch in a three-wide finish, beating Byron by a matter of feet. Stenhouse was just 0.066 seconds behind in third.
"I got really lucky with how everything worked out there," Larson told USA Sports afterwards. "All of a sudden, everything just opened up off of (Turn 4). What a day. Points, holy (expletive). Points are great." He told NBC he had been furious with himself coming off Turn 2 — "hands off the wheel, just mad" — before the seas parted in front of him.
The rally was actually his second of the closing laps. After earlier plummeting from the lead to 21st in four laps, he had fought back to second by Lap 184, when a 15-car crash stopped the race for 13 minutes of cleanup and sent it into overtime. He led 21 laps on the day and, per Sports Illustrated, claimed the most stage points of any driver — 16 in total, seven in Stage 1 and nine in Stage 2.
Two wrecks decided the championship picture
Talladega is supposed to be the Chase's great randomiser. This year it did the opposite: it clarified everything, brutally, at the expense of almost every Larson rival. A 12-car crash on Lap 132 collected five Chase drivers and, per NBC Sports and the Tennessean, effectively ended the championship hopes of Ryan Blaney and Tyler Reddick on the spot. Blaney finished 38th and is now 107 points behind; Reddick, caught up in both the Lap 132 wreck and the earlier chaos, finished 37th and trails by 126. Chase Elliott was also done for the day in that crash. Christopher Bell had already ruined his own afternoon in Stage 1, locking up on pit road, spinning into the wall and eventually finishing 35th, several laps down.
The late crash was worse. With five laps to go, a multi-car wreck sent Joey Logano upside down — crews flipped his car back onto four wheels and he climbed out under his own power — and Riley Herbst took a heavy hit into the inside wall. All drivers involved exited their vehicles, NASCAR confirmed. Logano finished 34th; Chase Briscoe, also caught up late, finished 33rd. Denny Hamlin was the exception who proved the rule: despite a taped-up front end from the Lap 132 crash, he salvaged eighth place, the only reason the championship is not already a formality.
YellaWood 500 results: the top ten
The finishing order at the front was a Chevrolet sweep. Behind Larson, Byron and Stenhouse came Chastain in fourth — rewarded for the push that won the race — and Cole Custer in fifth, his best result of the season. Carson Hocevar was sixth, Todd Gilliland seventh, Hamlin eighth, Alex Bowman ninth and Michael McDowell tenth. Austin Hill, whose aggressive pushes had briefly looked like the story of the finish, was credited 14th.
NASCAR Chase standings after Talladega
With eight of ten Chase races complete, the unofficial standings read: Larson 2,441 points; Hamlin 2,368 (minus 73); Christopher Bell 2,367 (minus 74); Chase Briscoe 2,362 (minus 79); Joey Logano 2,341 (minus 100); Ryan Blaney 2,334 (minus 107); Tyler Reddick 2,315 (minus 126); then Austin Cindric and Ty Gibbs tied on 2,258, Carson Hocevar on 2,243, Byron on 2,227, and Chase Elliott and Bubba Wallace on 2,223. Only four drivers remain within 100 points of Larson, and none within 73.
Why this matters
Start with the personal arc, because it is genuinely remarkable. Superspeedways were the one hole in the résumé of a driver widely considered the most talented of his generation: a series-worst 30.6 average finish across Talladega, Daytona and Atlanta, and no win in 58 prior starts on those tracks by NBC's count — the longest superspeedway drought among active drivers. USA Today put his drafting-track record at 0-for-48 entering Sunday. A driver does not fix a weakness like that by getting better at it in one afternoon; he fixes it the way Larson did, by surviving it — scoring stage points all day, staying out of both big wrecks, and being close enough, twice, to capitalise when the race tore itself apart in front of him. That is a different, more championship-shaped skill than raw speed, and it is the one his rivals most feared him learning.
Then look at the arithmetic. Before Talladega, the top five in the Chase were separated by 75 points and Larson's lead over Christopher Bell was five. One race later, his lead is 73 — nearly a full race's worth of points in this format — with Martinsville and the Homestead-Miami finale on November 8 remaining. Hamlin, Bell and Briscoe now need to be near-perfect and need Larson to fail. Nothing in his recent form suggests failure is coming: this was his third win of the Chase and, per NBC, his third victory in seven races, arriving a week after his worst Chase finish, 34th at Phoenix. Champions respond to their worst day like that.
What happens next
The Cup Series heads to Martinsville next week, a short track where Larson has won twice and where a strong day could let him wrap up a third championship before the finale. Hamlin's path is narrow but real: Martinsville is one of his best tracks too, and 73 points is not mathematically safe if Larson has a disaster. Bell, one point behind Hamlin, and Briscoe, five behind Bell, are effectively racing each other for the right to be the alternative if Larson stumbles. For Blaney, Logano and Reddick, Talladega turned the final fortnight into damage limitation. The wild card delivered — it just dealt its chaos to everyone except the one driver it was supposed to stop.
Related coverage: Verstappen wins amid Bahrain GP and Sepang chaos; Russell wins the Azerbaijan Grand Prix in Baku.
Sources
Sources: USA Today; NBC Sports; Sports Illustrated / Racing America; The Tennessean; Bleacher Report; NASCAR (@NASCAR via X, finish replay, October 25, 2026).