After snapping a 51-race winless streak and starting The Chase 55 points back, Larson now holds a 26-point lead. (Photo: Sean Gardner | Getty Images)
KANSAS CITY, Kan. — Hendrick Motorsports driver Kyle Larson put together one of the most dominant performances of the 2026 NASCAR Cup Series season in the Hollywood Casino 400, as the two-time champion led 235 of 267 laps at Kansas Speedway to earn his second win in the last three Chase races.
The driver of the No. 5 HendrickCars.com Chevrolet hit the ground running despite no practice or qualifying, including opening up a six-second lead just 20 laps into the race. From there, Larson swept both stages, earned the Xfinity Fastest Lap and won his 34th career Cup Series race.
Larson earned the maximum number of points a driver can earn in a race (76 points), and it was the first time under the new points format that a Cup Series driver had done so.
“Yeah, it was great,” Larson said. “Obviously, starting on the front row helped a lot, as well as just controlling the race, having good restarts and great power by our No. 5 HendrickCars.com Chevy. It wasn’t easy. I know it looked easy at times. There were definitely runs that were easier, but when the sun came out, it got difficult just to maintain my grip. I would stretch out, and then I’d catch traffic and I would just not be very good. I guess that the way that run just played out there, maybe coming out in traffic and the pace being down a little bit helped me live a little bit longer.
“I think it’s just sometimes easier to be the hunter rather than being hunted. I could see he (Chase Briscoe) was starting to struggle in front of me and still pushing really hard. I was just trying to take it easy, let him make a mistake and build some runs on exit. We were able to do that. Just proud of the team.”
Team Penske’s Austin Cindric caught many off guard after one of the best intermediate track races of his career. Cindric, who started 11th, had not finished in the top 10 on a 1.5-mile track this season before Kansas. In the race, Cindric drove to the front to finish third in Stage 2, second in Stage 2 and second in the race — earning a season-high 52 points after his runner-up finish.
“I definitely wish I would have had a shot there,” Cindric said. “You know, I thought we were really strong all day. We made some decent adjustments and got ourselves good for those long runs for the final run. We just lost a bit too much time in the pit cycle. I think there’s definitely some things I could have done better. I stayed long in the stall and threw off the stop a bit. When you lose by only half a second, it comes down to all the little stuff. Those guys had a hell of a battle for the lead to give me a shot. Super proud of the effort from everyone at Team Penske, Discount Tire and Ford. I feel like I had a car that could have won today but didn’t.
“I can be happy and pissed about that at the same time. Hopefully we can transfer that over to next week and the week following because I don’t see the reason why we can’t. I think these are the tracks you have to be critically good on. We saw pieces of this from Chicago and I felt like we took some bits and pieces and applied them to Kansas, and obviously, you can see what it did. I’m super proud of everybody on the team, keeping us in it all day and unloading super close.”
Joe Gibbs Racing driver Denny Hamlin spent most of the race toward the front, but never showed race-winning pace. Despite a runner-up finish in the first stage and a third-place finish in the second stage, Hamlin’s 51 points from his third-place finish in the race still set him back 26 points to Larson in the Cup Series standings.
“Winning,” Hamlin said when asked what kept his day from being exceptional. “That’s the only difference. Just didn’t quite have it today. Just was hanging around. We could be really good in the long run, but the short run, you know, the 5 (Kyle Larson) was really good, 2 (Austin Cindric) was good. We just couldn’t quite hold those guys off or keep them close enough in the short run. Obviously, at the end we ran a lot down, but just not enough time and track position. Obviously, gained a few spots there at the end. Overall, just that’s kind of what we had. Third-place car, driver and everything today.”
JGR’s Chase Briscoe seemed to be the only driver to contend with Larson throughout the final stage, and even passed Larson for the lead with a handful of laps remaining. However, Briscoe’s lead was short-lived as the No. 19 Bass Pro Shops Toyota was passed by the No. 5 HendrickCars.com Chevrolet after 23 laps.
“Just went really, really loose,” Briscoe said about dropping from first to fourth. “I kind of had that the run before when we did the green flag pit stop. I got it in the wall so many times that I had a little bit of a leak. Just went really, really free ultimately. It was better for me to be in second. Just being behind him, especially with how much the aero blocking, it would just tighten me up and allow me to actually be a little bit better. And then as soon as I would get the lead, I would just go really, really free again.
“So, yeah, frustrating for sure. Yeah, just felt like I had a win there to stay in contention for a championship, and obviously now losing, I don’t know, 123 points back, that’s probably not going to happen. We’ll keep trying for Bass Pro Shops, Tracker, Toyota. It’s nice to have a good finish in this Chase. It’s been a rough go to start. I have six more weeks to go try to win as many races as we can, and that’s what we’re going to do.”
Results from the 2026 Hollywood Casino 400 at Kansas Speedway are listed below:
Other Race Facts
Denny Hamlin was the only driver in the NASCAR Cup Series field to spend all 267 laps inside the top 15 at Kansas Speedway. Kyle Larson and Austin Cindric spent 266 of 267 laps inside the top 15.
The top seven finishers in Stage 2 all also finished inside the top seven of the Hollywood Casino 400.
23XI Racing’s Tyler Reddick had a very eventful day in his No. 45 Rockstar Energy Drink Toyota. Reddick started 15th and fell back to 35th almost immediately. After spending over 55% of the race running worse than 15th, Reddick fought back and earned an 11th-place finish.
Reddick’s 23XI teammate, Bubba Wallace, also had to turn his luck around to salvage a much-needed finish inside the top 15. Wallace was involved in an incident after getting clipped by fellow Chase contender Carson Hocevar, but managed to drive through the field to finish ninth.
Ryan Blaney finished fifth after back-to-back DNFs. With this result, Blaney jumped back into fifth in the Cup Series standings.
Joey Logano was running 12th before his tire started to come apart toward the end of the race. Unfortunately for the No. 22 team, Logano dropped eight spots to finish 20th, the last car on the lead lap.
Chase Driver Kansas Results
- Kyle Larson (1st)
- Austin Cindric (2nd)
- Denny Hamlin (3rd)
- Chase Briscoe (4th)
- Ryan Blaney (5th)
- Christopher Bell (6th)
- William Byron (7th)
- Chase Elliott (8th)
- Bubba Wallace (9th)
- Ryan Preece (10th)
- Tyler Reddick (11th)
- Daniel Suárez (14th)
- Ty Gibbs (17th)
- Joey Logano (20th)
- Chris Buescher (23rd)
- Carson Hocevar (33rd)
Chase Standings Post-Kansas
(Photo: USA Sports)
GRID Ranking
The 2026 GRID Ranking is the 10th year of the world’s premier motorsports ranking system, which was initially released on Sunday, April 5.
The official ranking includes drivers participating in seven racing series (NASCAR, IndyCar, Formula 1, Formula E, WRC, Supercars, MotoGP). Each driver earns GRID Ratings, which help determine their seeding in the GRID Ranking.
| DRIVER | OLD RATING | PREVIOUS RANKING | MOST RECENT FINISH | NEW RATING | NEW RANKING |
| Denny Hamlin | 12.91 | 5th | 3rd | 12.79 | 6th |
| Tyler Reddick | 12.25 | 9th | 11th | 11.46 | 14th |
| Christopher Bell | 11.43 | 14th | 6th | 11.08 | 17th |
| Kyle Larson | 9.90 | 24th | 1st | 10.46 | 20th |
| Ty Gibbs | 10.72 | 18th | 17th | 10.03 | 24th |
Week 26 of the GRID Ranking:
GRID Ranking
The 26th week of the #GRIDRanking! Only Formula 1 and NASCAR this weekend.#F1 | #ABBFormulaE | #INDYCAR | #MotoGP | #NASCAR | #RepcoSC | #WRC pic.twitter.com/mIGQcZdITA
— GRID Network (@GridNetworkTV) September 28, 2026
Week 26 of the GRID Ranking saw Kyle Larson overtake Ty Gibbs, while the top three of Denny Hamlin, Tyler Reddick, and Christopher Bell remained the same.
The next race on the NASCAR Cup Series schedule is the South Point 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway on Sunday, Oct. 4. Coverage begins at 5:30 p.m. ET on USA Network.
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