Hamlin and Bell left with what could have been in NASCAR Chase

November 6, 2026 · Yahoo Sports

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Statistically, Kyle Larson has a 99.4 percent chance of winning the NASCAR Cup Series championship on Sunday at Homestead-Miami Speedway, leaving Christopher Bell and Denny Hamlin at a combined .6 percent.

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In short, either of them coming back to win the Chase for the Championship would amount to the most improbable comeback in the history of a stock car season finale, so they are not holding their figurative breath.

All Larson has to do is finish 28th on Sunday but that assumes he fails to score a single stage point as well. Each stage point he earns over the first half of the race lowers that bare minimum clinch spot by one.

He could put the championship away prior to halfway by scoring eight stage points. In other words, a third-place finish in stage one ends the championship. Fourth and eighth over the first two stages ends it.

So how much confidence does Hamlin have in his .3 odds?

"I mean, I don't have any optimism," Hamlin said. "I don't. I'm here to try to have fun and try to win the race if possible, but I don't … I mean, there's obviously a chance you can win the lottery as well, but do you really count on that?"

Bell added that he ‘doesn’t know what else to say,’ because the odds are the odds.

For Hamlin, this Chase for the Championship was especially frustrating because he entered as the top seeded contender and had four regular season wins. It was a championship he controlled from the summer through the Bristol Night Race.

It's all he wanted after being two laps away from winning the championship last year under the final four format before a caution took that one away too.

"I felt like last year was like a sudden death and this one was just a slow bleed, truthfully," Hamlin said. "I mean, that's really was how it was. I mean, I was in shock for 10 minutes after the checkered flag waved because I hadn't seen (Larson) all day and now he's suddenly ahead of me.

"And then this year, through each playoff race, I'm on the way home just thinking, 'Gosh, it's alright though. We'll have to just make up for it next week.' And then we've just been trickling along and staying somewhat mathematically possible by being solid, but this one was definitely a cut to the wrist and we just watched it bleed."

Watch: Hamlin, Bell discuss Toyota's driver championship shortcomings

While Larson has taken control of the championship with his three playoff wins and second most stage points earned over the past nine races, Bell and Hamlin also endured mistakes that could have made this a lot closer.

“Ultimately, I think whenever we got into The Chase, the 5 car had a pickup in performance, but I still think by the numbers, there have been guys in Toyota cars specifically that have been faster than them, but just we all shot ourselves in a foot one way or the other,” Bell said.

Bell crashed on entry to pit road at Talladega and lost power steering at Las Vegas. Hamlin suffered damage at Darlington trying to put McDowell a lap down, spun from fourth place in Stage 1 at Las Vegas and had a disaster of a race at Phoenix.

“We have an execution problem, but I'm not going to totally remove myself from that problem,” Hamlin conceded.

At the same time, Hamlin also thinks there is just some inexplicable force that has denied him the championship over 20 years.

“Part of my career, most of my career, I've had fast cars, capable of winning championships,” Hamlin said. “But I mean, if anyone really did a deep dive and to see what happened in the playoffs or The Chase for the 11 year after year, it's an anomaly of things that just doesn't make sense, that just don't happen.

“So that's just unfortunate, and some of it's just execution of just we're not performing as well and we're not executing as well, so it's so frustrating because you know that you're definitely capable, but you have to still play the game. No one's going to go out there and score for you.”

Ultimately, even though neither are going to win this championship, both Bell and Hamlin praised NASCAR for ditching The Playoffs in exchange for the Chase for the Championship. Drivers controlled their own destinies.

For Larson, that meant winning and scoring stage points, and for the pair of Joe Gibbs Racing drivers, that meant mistakes and misfortune.

“I've thoroughly enjoyed the new format for sure,” Bell said. “And I guess one thing that I'll take away from it just an optimism that it doesn’t matter where you finish the regular season -- it comes down to 10 weeks of winning races.”

Bell says he remembers being asked during playoff media day about how far back the champion could start. No one picked Larson as the seventh seed with a 55-point deficit with 10 races to go.

“So yeah, it's just all about winning races,” Bell said. “That bonus for winning is really important, especially whenever it's only 10 races. So yeah, it truly is not how you start, but how those 10 races go.”

Hamlin said seasons will now be defined by the final 10 races with this format.

Christopher Bell, Joe Gibbs Racing, Denny Hamlin, Joe Gibbs Racing

“This Chase can be defined by a few really small short moments and you just don't really know what they are until it happens or it's in postmortem,” Hamlin said. “But yeah, it's a long grueling season, but there's just little moments that just was like the turning point that you're either going to end up winning the championship or not.

“That for me is my biggest takeaway.”

Was this Hamlin’s last chance to win the championship with only one more season left in his career?

“I would think next year would be my last best shot, but I mean, we obviously had a great regular season and The Chase tracks lined up great,” Hamlin said. “But obviously, we just did not perform at a championship level the last nine races (and) this is what you get.”

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