By finishing 12th and collecting 32 points in Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series Championship Race at Homestead-Miami Speedway, Kyle Larson, driver of the No. 5 HendrickCars.com Chevrolet Camaro at Hendrick Motorsports, has been crowned the 2026 NASCAR Cup Series champion.
It’s the second consecutive NASCAR Cup Series title for the driver out of Elk Grove, California, after winning last year’s title in a radically different (and now obsolete) format, making him the first driver to go back-to-back in the Cup Series since Jimmie Johnson won his five consecutive titles from 2006 to 2010.
At the young age of 34, Larson is the third-youngest driver to reach three NASCAR Cup Series championships, behind two of the NASCAR legends molded in the hands of Rick Hendrick and Hendrick Motorsports: Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson.
Both Gordon and Johnson would go on to win one more, or in the case of Johnson, four more, NASCAR Cup Series championships before hanging up their helmets.
During the final 10 weeks of the season, the rebirth of the NASCAR Cup Series Chase, Kyle Larson and Cliff Daniels performed in a manner that was parallel to that of Jimmie Johnson and Chad Knaus at their peak in the mid-to-late 2000s, which produced a record-destroying five consecutive championships under the original version of this format.
Now that Larson has officially closed the deal and picked up his third NASCAR Cup Series title, the championship stage always brings forward the question, especially when dealing with a globally recognized talent like Larson, of what comes next.
In Miami, Florida on Sunday night, just hours removed from the drop of the checkered flag in the NASCAR Cup Series Championship Race, is whether or not NASCAR, tonight, is celebrating the driver who will become the fourth seven-time NASCAR Cup Series champion?
“I think it’s possible, very possible, as talented as [Kyle Larson and Cliff Daniels] are together, for him to string them together,” said Rick Hendrick, owner of Hendrick Motorsports. “I don’t know if he can win five in a row. They sure have the chemistry to do multiple wins. I couldn’t believe we had five in a row. I think two in a row is pretty awesome, right now.”
Four-time NASCAR Cup Series champion and Vice Chairman of Hendrick Motorsports, Jeff Gordon, was in the midst of his driving career when Jimmie Johnson and Chad Knaus went on their unbelievable run from 2006 to 2010 and sees a lot of that driver-crew chief duo in Kyle Larson and Cliff Daniels.
“He’s going to pass me,” said Gordon. “I already came to that conclusion. Kind of knew that when he was going to Hendrick Motorsports. He’s special. But yeah, no, it was one of the first things I said to him when I saw him today. All right, there you go, number three, one more to go.”
“I was on the other side of the Jimmie five-in-a-row championships,” Gordon continued. “The way you do that is, one, you out-team him. You win the ones you’re not supposed to win and then you win the ones you are supposed to win. In my opinion, that was last year and this year. I say this year because when the Chase started, they were the best team, and they proved it week in and week out. They had the cars to do it. They went and won the championship. Last year, we all know how that one went down. That one kind of fell together in a great way because of the call that Cliff made and the driving that Kyle did. They put themselves in position, and they had something fall their way in a great way. That’s how you win multiple ones in a row, multiple championships, is when you have that opportunity, you seize it.”
“That’s what Jimmie and Chad did. I think there were championships, honestly, at least one of them, I felt like we should have beaten them. Man, they never quit. They never gave up. They came back and showed you how good they are and stepped it up and took it to another level. You’re like in awe of it. I think that’s what the competitors are looking at with Cliff and Kyle, that No. 5 team. They’re in awe of things they’re capable of doing.”
