AVONDALE, Ariz. — A NASCAR Cup season that started in shock could end in tears Sunday night at Phoenix Raceway.
When the white flag waved in the season-opening Daytona 500 in February, Denny Hamlin led and William Byron was ninth. A lap later, Byron was a two-time Daytona 500 winner and Hamlin’s car was wrecked.
“Holy cow!” Byron shouted on his radio after the win.
Nearly nine months later, Hamlin races for his first Cup championship, hoping to reach NASCAR’s pinnacle as his ailing father watches from home. Byron also seeks his first Cup title. So does Chase Briscoe. Kyle Larson goes for his second series title.
All four have overcome a rollercoaster season to reach this race.
Hamlin won a series-best six races, but the playoffs have been problematic. Hamlin had a conflict with teammate Ty Gibbs at New Hampshire. Hamlin’s last-lap duel at Kansas with Bubba Wallace, who drives for Hamlin’s 23XI Racing team, allowed Chase Elliott to slip by for the victory.
Chase Briscoe was among the drivers who had a flat tire in the 50-minute session.
Two weeks later, Hamlin shed tears when he won at Las Vegas, reaching 60 career Cup victories — likely to become the high-water mark moving forward in this competitive era of the sport. Reaching that milestone when his father, who has been ill for an extended period, could see it added to the moment.
“The most emotional, sentimental win I had was my last,” Hamlin said this week. “I just can’t think of another that meant as much to me as that one. This weekend could certainly trump that.”
Hamlin can see himself winning this championship.
“I’m a visualizing-type person,” he said. “I do visualize what it would be like. I also understand that there’s just so much work to be done between now and then.”
Byron’s highs and lows have come on the track. He led nearly half the race at Michigan in June but ran out of fuel while in second coming to the white flag. A few weeks later, Byron ran out of fuel on the last lap at Indianapolis while running third.
Kyle Larson and William Byron will race for title for Hendrick Motorsports Sunday at Phoenix Raceway.
Byron got to celebrate a fuel-mileage win when he took the checkered flag at Iowa in August. That put him back into the points lead and he went on to win the regular season title.
Byron’s chances of earning a third consecutive Championship 4 appearance appeared in jeopardy after the first two races in the Round of 8. Unaware that Ty Dillon was pitting, Byron slammed into him while running second at Las Vegas, ending his race. The following week at Talladega, Byron was spun while running fifth coming to the finish line. That put Byron in a must-win situation at Martinsville.
“I think it’s been a lot of work, a lot of heartbreak this year,” Byron said after his Martinsville victory. “ … You just channel those things, learn from them. If you can learn from them, they become positives. They become things you lean on in the moment. For some people they become scars and things you can’t get past. For me, I found a way to flip that script.”
Larson won three of the first 12 races this year and it seemed inevitable that he would race for the championship. Results waned and he went six races during the summer without leading a lap. All of Hendrick Motorsports struggled in the playoff opener at Darlington, but Larson’s results improved by the Round of 12, leading him back to this race.
“That made us build some mental toughness, I feel like, and work extra hard,” Larson said of the summer struggles. “This year has been really rewarding. Getting to the final four is very rewarding. I would want nothing more than to cap off the hard work with a championship.”
Coverage on NBC and Peacock begins at 2 p.m. ET Sunday with Countdown to Green
That would give him two Cup titles, making him the 18th driver in series history to win multiple crowns, further cementing his place in the sport’s history.
“What’s interesting is recently he’s really leaned into the long and successful career in Cup,” crew chief Cliff Daniels said at Martinsville about Larson.
“ … He thinks 50 wins could be on the table (Larson has 32 Cup wins). He thinks 60 is definitely the new number of a benchmark to get to. So that was actually fun to talk about and kind of that in our mind.
“I know that he thinks a lot of Tony Stewart and Tony has the three championships. Of course (Jeff) Gordon has four. So it’s hard to exactly define, but I know that he has those numbers and those guys on the radar.”
For Briscoe, the focus is on his first Cup title and to do it in his first season with Joe Gibbs Racing.
He struggled in the first half of the season, adjusting to the team’s cars and manner of doing things, but results improved as the season progressed and he scored his first win with the team at Pocono in June.
The town of Mitchell, Indiana, will have a viewing part for Sunday’s Cup title race.
A few weeks before the playoffs began, Briscoe told his wife Marissa that “this is really the first time I’ve ever legitimately thought I could win a Cup championship.”
Then Briscoe went out and led 309 laps in winning the Southern 500 to open the playoffs.
That victory, to crew chief James Small “solidified” to him that Briscoe was a championship-caliber driver.
“He’d shown continuous improvement thought the year,” Small said. “Pocono was a good step in winning that race and he started getting more and more competitive and racing better. Looking like he belong up front.
“When we went to Darlington and dominated the way we did, that’s when, for me personally, I really felt like, ‘Hey this kid can do it. He’s one of the good ones right now.’”
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