Larson Clinches Third Cup Title in Stage 1 at Homestead

Kyle Larson clinched his third NASCAR Cup Series title at Homestead-Miami Speedway on Sunday, NASCAR.com reports, and he did it before the race was half run. A fourth-place finish in Stage 1 gave him the seven stage points he needed, and with Christopher Bell third and Denny Hamlin sixth, the maths closed on both of them at once. The championship was over on lap 80 of 267.

How did Larson clinch the title so early?

On points, not on pace. Larson entered the finale 67 points ahead of Bell and 70 clear of Hamlin, needing nine points or a 28th-place finish without stage points to guarantee the title, NASCAR.com reports. He took one point for starting and seven more for fourth in Stage 1, after pole-sitter Chase Briscoe’s engine blew on lap 78 and brought out a caution that ended the stage two laps early. Bell scored eight for third, Hamlin five for sixth, and that left Bell 66 behind with only 66 points still available, while Larson owned the tiebreaker and was guaranteed at least one more point for his finishing position.

NASCAR did the sums and told the No. 5 team. Crew chief Cliff Daniels radioed the news to his driver, USA Today reports: “They’ve declared it. We got it.” Larson’s answer became the quote of the day: “It’s done? … Well that was anticlimactic.” Then, racer to the end, he told Daniels they would keep running the race the same way. “Yeah, love it. Let’s go,” NASCAR.com reports. The race itself was still running when the title was settled, with Hamlin winning Stage 2 and Larson brushing the wall on lap 119 before pitting, The Racing Experts report.

How did a winless regular season turn into a title?

Through a ten-race run that flipped the whole season. Larson went the entire 26-race regular season without a victory, the Associated Press reports, carrying a 51-race winless streak into September while Hamlin entered the Chase as the dominant No. 1 seed, 55 points ahead of seventh-seeded Larson. The turn came on August 15 at Richmond, where a sixth-place finish was followed by a sprint car win at Knoxville that same night, all 50 laps led for a $200,000 prize, USA Today reports. Larson called Darlington, the Chase opener, the real turning point: a fifth-place finish that felt like the No. 5 team again.

From there the points piled up. He ended the drought at Gateway in the second Chase race, took second at Bristol to snatch the points lead from Hamlin, swept both stages and led 235 laps for the maximum 76 points at Kansas, and finished second at Las Vegas after a 26-second pit stop dropped him a lap down, NASCAR.com reports. Across the nine Chase races before Homestead he averaged a 6.7 finish, USA Today reports, a run that included the disastrous Phoenix afternoon and the Talladega rescue that followed it.

What happened at Phoenix and Talladega?

The two races that nearly ended the title and then saved it. At Phoenix a tyre failure with 29 laps to go sent Larson into the Turn 1 wall and out of the race in 34th, worth three points, USA Today reports. His 49-point championship lead shrank to five overnight, with seven drivers suddenly within 56 points of him. Phoenix ended with a tyre failure and a 34th-place finish, and a week later the title race looked open again.

Talladega answered it in one afternoon. Larson, winless in his previous 58 drafting-track starts, led 23 laps, fell from the lead to 11th on the final lap, then charged back through the tri-oval for his first career superspeedway victory, NASCAR.com reports, banking 71 points and stretching the lead from five to 73. Larson won at Talladega from 11th to first on the final lap, and every other Chase driver hit trouble that day, which put the No. 5 team in position to capitalise. A ninth at Martinsville, a lap down and scoreless through the first two stages before a free pass after Bell and Hamlin spun together, left him with the 67-point cushion he carried into Homestead.

Where does this title put Larson in NASCAR history?

Among the greats, and ahead of schedule. Larson is the 11th driver to win at least three Cup titles, the Associated Press reports, and the first back-to-back champion since Jimmie Johnson won five in a row from 2006 to 2010. At 34 he is the third-youngest driver to reach three titles, behind only Johnson and Jeff Gordon, Fox Sports reports, and he has more Cup wins than any other driver since the start of the 2020 season. Hamlin said he would have defied the pit call had he known Larson was a lap down, a reminder of how the two title rivals kept trading blows all season.

The three titles could hardly look more different. In 2021 Larson won 10 races and led 2,581 laps, capping a dominant first season at Hendrick by winning the Phoenix finale. In 2025 he never led a lap at Phoenix, yet a late two-tire call helped him finish third and take the title while Hamlin’s dominant race slipped away, NASCAR.com reports. This time there was no single restart or gamble. There was a ten-race run that absorbed dominant wins, remarkable recoveries and one miserable afternoon, and still came out on top.

What does the title mean for the people around Larson?

Plenty for the pit box. Daniels is now only the second crew chief to win three Cup titles in his first seven seasons, USA Today reports, matching Ray Evernham’s three with Gordon in the 1990s, and both chiefed cars from Hendrick Motorsports. Daniels was a race engineer on Johnson’s 2016 championship team before becoming Larson’s crew chief, NASCAR.com reports, which links two generations of Hendrick title winners. Bell fired back at Larson over the power-steering claim earlier in the season, and the respect between the two camps ran through the Chase even as they fought for the same points.

The team title is the record 16th for Hendrick: four with Gordon, seven with Johnson, one each with Terry Labonte and Chase Elliott, and now three with Larson. Honeycutt won the Truck Series title at Homestead the same weekend, which made it a double celebration at the track for the organisation’s wider stable.

What happens next?

The season is over. Homestead was the finale, so there is no next race until the 2027 season opens at Daytona with the Wheatley Vodka Clash on February 13, 2027, when Larson will chase a fourth title and a third in a row. The Homestead race winner and Larson’s finishing position are the loose ends from Sunday: the title was decided in Stage 1, but the trophy for the race itself was still to be won when this article was written, and a later update will add it.