Bobby Travis · NASCAR/IndyCar Correspondent
A blown tire and a hard hit into the wall nearly wiped out Kyle Larson’s comfortable points cushion at the Freeway Insurance 500.
Kyle Larson rolled into the Freeway Insurance 500 at Phoenix Raceway on October 18, 2026, the 33rd of 36 races and the seventh race of the Chase, with a 49-point lead over Denny Hamlin. He left with a DNF and a 34th-place finish after the No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet cut a right-front tire and slammed the wall in Turn 1 about 30 laps from the finish. Tyler Reddick took the win, while Larson’s cushion melted away: Christopher Bell is now second, just 5 points back.
A weekend without grip
The first practice session already hinted that this would not be an easy weekend for Larson. “Our car was way off, don’t know why,” crew chief Cliff Daniels said. The points leader qualified only 22nd, far from where you expect the championship leader to start, while his top rivals swept the first five spots on the grid. In the race itself, the team fought the car’s balance all day.
Through the first two stages, Larson never found the grip he needed to run up front. He was 22nd at the end of Stage 1, went a lap down in Stage 2 and only got back on the lead lap with the wave around. He scored no stage points, a rare sight for a Hendrick car in this kind of form.
The hit in Turn 1
About 30 laps from the end, Larson was running 17th behind Austin Cindric when the right-front tire let go. “I went to the brakes into [Turn] 1 and the right front was down,” Larson said. The car hit the wall hard, and the damage ended his day. That left Larson with just three points for the entire weekend and a 34th-place finish.
It was not just bad luck, though. Crew chief Cliff Daniels admitted the team had run too little air pressure, about a pound less than in last year’s season finale at Phoenix. “I thought we had margin in the tank there and obviously we didn’t,” Daniels said. For a team that came into Phoenix as the championship favorite, it was a rare total loss, and it shows how quickly a comfortable lead can turn into a crisis on a short oval.
The title fight is wide open again
The DNF shrank Larson’s cushion from 49 points over Denny Hamlin to just 5 over new second-place man Christopher Bell. Bell cashed in with a fourth-place finish after taking third in both stages. Reddick took two tires under the final caution and turned that call into his sixth win of the season. With three races left, the top seven drivers in the Chase standings are separated by just 56 points, about as tight as it gets at this stage of the season.
Next up is Talladega on October 25, a true superspeedway where pack racing and a single caution can decide a lot. For Larson, it shapes up as a mix of risk and opportunity: whoever reads the draft right and ends up out front in Talladega can quickly put a bad day like Phoenix behind him, and whoever gets caught up in the chaos of the pack can lose even more points just as fast. The finale is set for November 8 at Homestead, and after this weekend it is clear the 2026 title is likely to stay open until then.
