Kyle Larson needed nine points at Homestead-Miami. He finished 12th and took his third NASCAR Cup Series championship.
Larson’s titles in 2021 and 2025 already made him one of the sport’s premier drivers. This one makes him the first Cup Series driver to win back-to-back championships since Jimmie Johnson, the seven-time champion who also campaigned for Hendrick Motorsports in a Chevrolet. Larson is now the 11th driver in Cup Series history with at least three championships, joining a list that includes Lee Petty, David Pearson, Cale Yarborough, Darrell Waltrip, Tony Stewart, and Joey Logano.
For Chevrolet, the numbers stack up fast. The title is the manufacturer’s 35th in Cup Series history, the 15th since 2000, and the 16th for Hendrick Motorsports specifically. That last figure ties Hendrick’s total to Chevy’s own GT-class IMSA haul: the Corvette program clinched its 16th GT-class IMSA Manufacturer championship at Petit Le Mans just five weeks ago. It has been a productive autumn in Bowling Green and Concord.
The road to Homestead was not clean. Larson won no races during the regular season, arriving at The Chase on the strength of consistent top-5 finishes rather than victories. The Chase format itself was new this year: NASCAR dropped its winner-takes-all finale structure, shifting to a 10-race points battle among the top 16 qualifiers. Larson used the format well. He led the most laps in the Chase opener, then won at World Wide Technology Raceway the following weekend. Kansas and Bristol followed with a win and a 2nd-place result, then Charlotte produced another 2nd and a 6th at Kansas.
Phoenix nearly derailed it. A late-race tire failure put Larson into the wall and left him just 5 points clear of his nearest rival entering Talladega. What happened next was both a sporting result and a coordinated effort: drivers from Hendrick Motorsports, Hyak Motorsports, Haas Factory Team, and Spire Motorsports collectively ran 1st through 6th at the Yellawood 500, with Larson leading the group. It was his first superspeedway win and it arrived with help from across the Chevrolet program. At Martinsville, a lost lap in Stage 1 limited Larson to 9th, but a 67-point advantage entering Homestead made the finale a formality as much as a finish.
The season also marked the debut of an updated Camaro ZL1 bodywork package for all Chevrolet teams. The Talladega 1-through-6 sweep was the clearest evidence that the new design had been dialed in, though Larson’s crew chief Cliff Daniels and the No. 5 team spent the early months working through what the revised aero demanded.
Larson arrived at this championship without a win since May 2025, a drought that stretched across an entire regular season. The Chase erased it, and the number now next to his name — three — puts him in company that most Cup Series drivers never reach. Jimmie Johnson won seven from the same shop. Larson has time.
Source: General Motors. Images courtesy of General Motors.
