The Chase for the NASCAR Cup Series championship is on with the end of the regular season at Daytona International Speedway and the start of the postseason in the Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway. 

Denny Hamlin enters as the No. 1 seed and generally the leader in almost every statistic. However, some drivers are ready to take Hamlin to task. Here's a look at every Chase driver and who could hoist the Bill France Cup at the end of these 10 races:

Darlington (1.366 mi., 9/6), Gateway (1.25 mi., 9/13), Bristol (0.5-mi., 9/19), Kansas (1.5 mi., 9/24), Las Vegas (1.5 mi., 10/4), Charlotte (1.5 mi., 10/11), Phoenix (1 mi., 10/18), Talladega (2.66 mi., 10/25), Martinsville (0.533 mi., 11/1), Homestead-Miami (1.5 mi., 11/8) 

Jonathan Fjeld: “Is this Denny’s year?” people in NASCAR have asked every year since his close 2010 loss -- 2012, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2023 and 2025 -- where Hamlin has ebbed and flowed into being a legitimate contender for the Cup Series championship. 

Now, 2026 looks like the 64-time Cup Series winner’s best chance at winning a championship.

Hamlin has won at two intermediate tracks and two speedways and led laps at a short track like Martinsville Speedway where he clearly had the best car throughout the day. 

With a 25-point lead over Ryan Blaney and an impressive record this season, it’s really Denny Hamlin’s championship to lose. Even if Blaney reels off of a couple of wins and pulls out to an early advantage, he could still come back and win as many as four of the six races before Homestead-Miami and lock up the title going into the weekend with this new format. 

Tyler Jones: When you consider that Ford took awhile to figure things out and Blaney was overcoming it, one could argue that he’s been the best driver in the Cup Series this season.

Blaney has done something that the favorite in Hamlin hasn’t done and that’s win a championship. Unfortunately for him, the title will not be decided at Phoenix where he won earlier this season and where Team Penske has dominated.

There’s a strong case to be made that Blaney could win his second career championship. He enters The Chase with three wins but the biggest question mark isn’t him. Can Ford give him consistent race-winning speed? We shall see…

JF: The only thing stopping Tyler Reddick and No. 45 team from being the 2026 NASCAR Cup Series champions is Tyler Reddick and his No. 45 team.

Crashes at Michigan and Iowa, an incident and blown tire at Naval Base Coronado, a freak incident at Chicagoland and mechanical failures at Sonoma and North Wilkesboro, instead of finishing top-10 in each race, was the difference between Reddick starting 25 points ahead of anyone else and starting 35 points behind the leader.

Reddick is the favorite to win at Darlington and could be on Hamlin’s doorstep heading into Gateway and Bristol, where they aren’t looked at as the favorites.

The big thing is he and his team have to stay focused, not get down and be ready to perform at 100% in the three intermediate races where they could go toe-to-toe with Hamlin.

TJ: Gibbs has had a career season with two victories after going 131 races before getting his first win.

Short tracks will be his wheelhouse. If Gibbs is going to win the title, he has to perform extremely well at Gateway, Bristol, Phoenix and Martinsville. If he does that and competes for top fives at the intermediate and drafting tracks, Gibbs can find himself in contention.

What Gibbs has to do differently though is be the reason his team wins races. His crew chief Tyler Allen made the right call to put him in position to win at Iowa but in order to win the title, Gibbs has to be the difference-maker going forward. 

JF: Chase Briscoe is one of those drivers who could run up front just anywhere but he hasn’t had Hamlin or even Bell’s race-winning speed.

Briscoe has had just a few chances at winning this season -- Richmond, Sonoma, Charlotte, Nashville Superspeedway and of course Chicagoland -- but has otherwise felt like the perennial fifth-place driver.

Of course, nothing wrong with that. If he can maintain that when others falter, history shows he could find himself closer to championship contention in the final races than people expect.

Briscoe could win a race at some point in the Chase but time will tell if he can break through the Toyota quagmire.

TJ: Bell was widely expected to contend for the championship going into the year and he hasn’t had a bad season by any means. He just lacks the wins to show for it.

Seven second-place finishes! Yes, seven, you read that right. While that many second-place finishes feels like kissing your sister, Bell and his team shouldn’t be discouraged. They know they have a driver that can win races. They have race-winning speed. They just haven’t been able to seal the deal. 

If Bell is going to win the title, he might have to have a performance similar to Tony Stewart in 2011. Stewart had zero victories entering the postseason and went on to claim the title with five wins in The Chase. Bell is capable, they just have to put it all together.

TJ: The defending-series champion Kyle Larson has had a weird year. Larson has led the third-most laps of any driver with 659, however has yet to get to victory lane.

It has been 48 races since the last time Larson claimed a win. The new Chevy body really set him and Hendrick Motorsports back. Larson hasn’t forgotten how to drive and his crew chief Cliff Daniels is still one of the best in the biz.

However, if they can’t step-up their game and find the race-winning speed from Chevy, then Larson won’t have much of a chance to defend his title.

JF: Elliott is on track for the fewest top-fives and top-10s in a full season he has run in the NASCAR Cup Series. 

In the 11 races since Michigan in June, where he led 67 laps before getting in a harrowing crash with Christopher Bell, Elliott has had just one top-10 finish (fifth at Richmond) and has led just 51 laps compared to two wins, five top-fives, eight top-10s and 266 laps led in the 15 prior races.

Hendrick is notorious for looking okay-to-awful in the summertime and then turning it up in the Chase. However, there hasn’t been any indication of them showing championship speed like there has been in previous seasons. They’re always a step behind Toyota and even Ryan Blaney.

Contrary to the name, Chase is a racer not a Chaser this postseason. 

JF: This is one guy to watch out for, even starting this far back in the Chase and seriously lacking speed on some of the Chase tracks.

Seriously. Darlington, 30th. Kansas, 30th. Las Vegas, 15th, where he’s a multi-time winner.

However, Indianapolis showed the Chase could be different. A high-speed track that usually shows whose cars are hot and whose are not, Joey Logano’s No. 22 car rapidly caught up to two Toyotas in the final run. Although he couldn’t get by, Logano finally showed speed.  

Why? A rule change reportedly changed the composition of the splitters on the cars that could minimize Toyota’s advantage over the field. 

Darlington is the first test. If Logano is fast, watch out. You don’t want Logano to get hot and if he has a hot race at Darlington, he could parlay that into success at Gateway, Bristol and the intermediate tracks that will define the Chase and Talladega, where he has racked up points.

Still, starting almost a full race out will put the Toyotas in spot to do what they want to, instead of needing to do something to get closer to the Cup. They have the speed, they have everything. 

Yet, that type of challenge could be exactly what motivates Logano in his mythical even year.

TJ: You look at Chris Buescher in The Chase and you’re probably asking, how did he get here?

Buescher has been the best driver for RFK Racing this year, as the team showed a lot more consistency throughout the year, which is why they got two teams in The Chase. If Ford hadn’t started the year so rough, Buescher may have had a win or two by now.

While the championship is the ultimate goal, if Buescher can get to victory lane in The Chase, that would be a big deal. The No. 17 team hasn’t had race-winning speed but Buescher isn’t wrecking racecars either. They aren’t a championship contender but that doesn’t mean that this group can’t end the year on a high-note.

JF: Daniel Suarez is one of seven Chase drivers who started the season in Chase contention and stayed there almost all of the way through the regular season, only falling out of Chase contention after Phoenix -- falling to 17th before getting back in the next week. 

In a season that looked like a stopgap for Suarez and Spire Motorsports, they have a chance to do some surprising things in the Chase.

Upset Denny Hamlin and the Toyotas? Definitely not. However, staying ahead of Byron and sticking it to Hendrick could happen as the Chase begins and Spire stakes their claim as a serious Chevrolet team.

TJ: What a year it has been for Hurricane Hocevar, becoming one of the most talked about drivers in the sport.

The Talladega win was iconic and proved that he isn’t just a personality. Hocevar has an incredibly bright future in the sport but he’s lacked consistency. Hocevar has finished 19th or worse in his last four starts. Did he and Spire peak too early? It sure looks that way.

Hocevar’s strength has been the intermediate tracks and drafting tracks. With his recent slump and four short tracks in The Chase, the chances of Hocevar winning a title look very bleak at this point but that doesn’t take away from the breakout year he’s had.

JF: A year removed from winning the regular season as NASCAR’s foremost-accomplished team, William Byron and his No. 24 team finished behind two Chevrolet teams that, just a couple of seasons ago, scraped to make the top-25 in points -- let alone make the Chase.

Byron started the season strong, running top-five in points through the first seven races until five finishes of 30th or worst and meager stage points in his top-10 finishes pushed him out of the top-10 in points the rest of the way. 

Other than Chicagoland (94 laps led), Las Vegas (26), New Hampshire (26) and the Coke Zero Sugar 400 at Daytona (14). Byron has led just 16 laps in the other 22 races. It’s going to take a lot for them to turn things around in the final 10 to win the Cup.

TJ: Bubba Wallace is a bit of a head-scratcher this season. I’m sure he’s happy to be in The Chase but this year has been underwhelming to say the least.

23XI Racing has had their best season in team history with seven wins. None of those have come from Wallace, with five from Reddick and two from part-time driver Corey Heim. 

If Wallace is going to make some noise in The Chase, he has to perform well at the places he’s done well in the past like Kansas and Talladega. That won’t be enough though. They need to tap into what has worked for Reddick and Heim if he’s going to have any chance to contend for the title.

JF: The equivalent of a 9-8 team, Austin Cindric making the Chase is a great accomplishment for them. If nothing else happens this season, they’ve gotten the job done.

However, this is Team Penske. With champion teammates like Joey Logano and Ryan Blaney, who have won multiple times this year and improved speed, he should be expected to win.

Cindric’s strength is consistency. He only had three finishes of 14th or worse in the second half of the regular season and has shown the most consistent speed of any Penske car from start to now this season, while Logano has ran in the 30s in some of the Chase tracks coming up.

Cindric isn’t a championship contender but his consistency could get him to a top-10 points finish and possibly a win in the postseason.

TJ: Preece is the ultimate underdog, getting into The Chase with his walkoff win at Daytona.

This has been a career-year for Preece, making the postseason for the first time and getting a win. However, he has not led a lot of laps, just 55 so far this season. Daytona will need to be a momentum-shifter of sorts and Saturday’s win showed that he can be a difference-maker and deliver clutch performances.

You could say Preece wasn’t supposed to be here, so his team really has nothing to lose. Preece will be good on the short-tracks and he has to feel good now for Talladega after the Daytona victory. RFK Racing has a lot of work to do however on the intermediate tracks if Preece is going to have a chance. 

Preece has to come out hot. Starting 100 points back from the lead will be difficult to overcome. He’s got work to do but at least he has some positive momentum going for him heading into The Chase now.