Kyle Larson clinched his second NASCAR Cup Series championship at Phoenix Raceway after a dramatic late caution overturned Denny Hamlin’s near-certain first title and sent the season finale into overtime.
Hamlin had dominated the race, leading 208 of 319 laps and appearing moments away from finally ending his long pursuit of a championship. With three laps remaining, Hamlin led comfortably before William Byron suffered a puncture and hit the wall, triggering the caution that changed everything.
“Just unbelievable,” Larson said. “I cannot believe it.”
Hamlin could not believe it either.
“I really don’t have much for emotion right now. Just numb about it ’cause just in shock,” Hamlin said after consoling his crying daughters on pit road. “We were 40 seconds away from a championship. This sport can drive you absolutely crazy because sometimes speed, talent, none of that matters.”
When the caution came out, Hamlin pitted for four new tires while Larson’s Hendrick Motorsports crew opted for two. The decision placed Larson fifth for the two-lap overtime sprint, while Hamlin restarted in tenth. Larson finished third, securing enough points to claim the championship, while Hamlin crossed the line sixth.
Ryan Blaney, eliminated from title contention the previous week, won the race.
“You do have to feel for that group and Denny,” Blaney said. “Doing a good job all day, it not playing out for him. But that is racing. It sucks sometimes. They can hang their head about it, but they should be very proud about the effort. They had the fastest race car here. Just one of those things where it doesn’t work out. Looked like it was going into his favor, unfortunately for him, it didn’t.”
As Larson celebrated, Hamlin sat motionless in his car for several moments before wiping his face with a towel. Around him, members of the Joe Gibbs Racing team stood in disbelief.
“Nothing I could do different,” Hamlin said. “I mean, prepared as good as I could coming into the weekend and my team gave me a fantastic car. Just didn’t work out. I was just praying ‘no caution’ and we had one there. What can you do? It’s just not meant to be.”
Hamlin defended his crew chief’s choice to change four tires. “It was the right call,” he said. “Too many others took only two, which created too big of a gap for us to close in so little time.”
For the 44-year-old Virginia driver, it was his sixth missed opportunity to win a championship after heartbreaks in 2010, 2014, 2019, 2020 and 2021.
“Man, if you can’t win that one, I don’t know which one you can win,” Hamlin said.
Larson, who had not won since early May, was in disbelief that he and his No. 5 Chevrolet had pulled it off.
“We didn’t lead a lap and won the championship,” he said. “We had an average car at best and had the right front [tire] go down, lost a lap and got the wave around, saved by the caution with the wave around. It’s just unbelievable. What a year by this motorsports team.”
After the race, Larson told NBC, “I’m just speechless. I can’t believe it. What a year by Hendrick Motorsports. Cliff Daniels, everybody, his leadership, his complete leadership just showed that whole race. Keeping us all motivated. Always having a plan. All of that. That’s just the story of our season. Again, just unbelievable. I cannot believe it. This is insane.”
Larson’s path to the title was far from easy. A slow pit stop at the end of Stage 2 dropped him from fourth to 17th, and a right-front tire failure under green forced an unscheduled stop that cost him a lap. He took the wave-around to rejoin the lead lap and later gained track position with a two-tire call under caution.
“We had the right front go down, lost a lap,” Larson said. “Got saved by the caution. Did the wave-around. Was really bad that run. We took two tires. I was like, Oh, God, here we go. We’re going to go to the back now.”
When the final caution flew for Byron’s crash, Larson again took two tires, which gave him the track position advantage over Hamlin.
“It had a lot more grip than I anticipated,” Larson said. “We got lucky with the final caution. I was really hoping we were going to take two again. I felt like I learned a lot on that restart, bombing Turns 1 and 2 really hard. Thought I could do the same thing if we got another one. Just unbelievable.”
Byron, whose crash triggered the fateful caution, was devastated.
“I’m just super bummed that it was a caution obviously,” Byron said. “I hate that. Hate it for Denny. I hate it for the 11 team. I mean, Denny was on his way to it. I hate that. There’s a lot of respect there. I obviously do not want to cause a caution. If I had known what tire it was, known that a tire was going down before I got to the corner, I would have done something different.”
Larson’s second career title follows his 2021 triumph, also with Hendrick Motorsports. The 33-year-old from Elk Grove, California, joins Kyle Busch and Joey Logano as the only multi-time champions of NASCAR’s playoff era.
Despite not winning a race during the playoffs, Larson’s consistency and tactical precision kept him in contention. He recorded three wins earlier in the year at Homestead-Miami, Bristol and Kansas, plus 15 top-five finishes and 22 top-10s, finishing the season with a 13.2 average finish.
The victory also extends Hendrick Motorsports’ extraordinary record, marking the team’s 15th Cup Series title over 31 seasons and Chevrolet’s 34th drivers’ championship overall.
“We had an average car today, but we kept fighting,” Larson said. “We stayed calm, made the right calls, and when the opportunity came, we took it.”
