Harvick Says Bell and Blaney Beat Themselves Out of the Cup Title

Kevin Harvick has delivered his verdict on the Cup title race, and it is not kind to the two drivers who lost it. Christopher Bell and Ryan Blaney both had the speed to beat Kyle Larson, Harvick said on his Happy Hour podcast, but they lost the championship through their own mistakes. “They just didn’t execute and they didn’t make it happen when it was crunch time over the last 10 weeks,” he said, EssentiallySports reports. “In the end, you hear the saying, ‘Don’t beat yourself.’ They beat themselves.”

What did Bell do wrong?

Two things, in consecutive weeks, and both were his own doing. Bell arrived at Talladega five points behind Larson, was leading under green, and spun entering pit road on lap 56, hitting the inside wall, EssentiallySports reports. A week later at Martinsville he sped on pit road while racing near the lead, a penalty that cost him track position even though he recovered to finish tenth. Bell and Briscoe had already gone wheel to wheel this season, with Briscoe beating Bell by 0.029 seconds in a Charlotte photo finish, and the two late-season errors undid whatever momentum that duel had built. By Homestead the deficit was 67 points, and Bell finished second, 49 behind. The speed was never the problem. Bell had already shown it earlier in the playoffs, when he fired back at Larson over a power-steering claim and made clear he believed he could beat him. Harvick’s point is that believing it and executing it are different things.

What went wrong for Blaney?

Smaller pieces, adding up to the same result. A brake rotor exploded at Gateway while Blaney ran sixth, leaving him 35th, EssentiallySports reports. At Bristol he led 202 laps and was fighting for second when Carson Hocevar took him out, ending his night in 33rd. He won the finale, passing Tyler Reddick on lap 266 of 267, but Larson had already clinched and Blaney finished fourth in the standings, 94 points back, Media Referee reports. The Gateway failure was mechanical rather than driver error, and Harvick’s case against Blaney is thinner than his case against Bell, which is worth saying plainly. What Harvick is really arguing is that champions do not let a season come down to surviving other people’s mistakes, and Blaney spent the playoffs doing exactly that.

How did Larson clinch it so early?

On lap 78 of 267 at Homestead-Miami, when Chase Briscoe’s engine failed and the stage ended with Larson running fourth, EssentiallySports reports. Larson had just clinched a third Cup title with 189 laps still to run, and crew chief Cliff Daniels relayed the news while Larson asked whether it was really over. The title was settled before the race was half run, which is the detail that makes Harvick’s verdict sting: Bell and Blaney did not lose the championship at Homestead. They lost it in the ten weeks before it, and the finale only confirmed the arithmetic. Larson clinched the title in Stage 1 at Homestead, and the race itself became a formality.

Why does Harvick hold Larson’s team up as the contrast?

Because the No. 5 team made none of the mistakes the others made. “You look at a Cliff Daniels, right? Like, they’re making things happen, and they’re making those key calls. And that five-team and even Larson, right? You didn’t see the speed and penalties. You didn’t see the mistakes on pit road,” Harvick said, EssentiallySports reports. He went further, saying that beating Larson means matching an elite level of preparation with a leader like Daniels, and asking whether any other crew chief has that type of leadership. Daniels, with a third championship alongside Larson, tied for fourth all-time among Cup crew chiefs. Harvick also cited Joey Logano’s No. 22 team as the other example of a crew that grinds out results by not making mistakes.

Has Harvick seen this before?

Yes, and from both sides of it. In 2010, Denny Hamlin led Jimmie Johnson by 15 points entering Homestead after a fuel and lug-nut stumble at Phoenix, spun, finished 14th and lost the title by 39 points, EssentiallySports reports. In 2019, Hamlin’s crew taped his grille too aggressively on a green-flag stop, the engine overheated, he finished tenth, and crew chief Chris Gabehart admitted: “We beat ourselves right here.” Bell lived a version of it in 2024, when a last-lap wall ride at Martinsville tied him with William Byron for the final Championship 4 spot and NASCAR dropped him from 18th to 22nd, handing Byron the berth on four points. Harvick knows the other side too: in 2014, Hamlin stayed out on old tires at Homestead and Harvick, on fresher rubber, passed him for the title.

What happens next?

The season is over, and the verdict will follow Bell and Blaney into 2027. Denny Hamlin said he would have defied a pit call had he known Larson was a lap down, and the post-season argument is now about who owns the mistakes and who owns the execution. Bell and Blaney have not responded to Harvick yet, and neither has to: the points table already says what Harvick said, only more quietly. Larson became the first driver since Johnson’s five straight titles to win back-to-back championships, and he did it in a year Hendrick Motorsports itself called one of its statistically weaker ones. The speed was there for all three of them. Only one of them used it without tripping over it.