The championship four is set. One race remains to settle the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series championship. One past champion is in the field in Kyle Larson, and three drivers who are hoping to add their names to the legendary list of champions before them in Denny Hamlin, Chase Briscoe, and William Byron. And one thing all four of these drivers have in common is an extensive short track racing past that has helped define their present.

Kyle Larson’s short track background is the most obvious one. In addition to winning the 2021 NASCAR Cup Series championship, Larson’s probably best known for his prowess on the dirt. In a Sprint Car he’s a three-time Knoxville Nationals champion, a Kings Royal winner, a nine-time Kubota High Limit Racing winner, and a 39-time World of Outlaws winner. In a Midget he’s won the Chili Bowl Nationals on three occasions, his most recent coming earlier this year. He also grabbed two more Golden Drillers in Micros at the Tulsa Shootout in 2025 too. We can’t forget his Dirt Late Model foray either, where he won crown jewel races like the Prairie Dirt classic. 

Simply put: when it comes to short track racing, specifically on dirt, Kyle Larson is arguably the best to ever do it.

Making his first appearance in NASCAR’s championship four is Mitchell, Indiana’s Chase Briscoe. The season that put Briscoe on the map was his championship-winning ARCA Menards Series season in 2016 when he went to victory lane six times. Half of those wins came on ARCA’s short tracks. Winchester Speedway, the baddest of the bad? He tamed it. Iowa Speedway, a short track that thinks it’s a big track? No match for 2016 Chase Briscoe. His home track of Indianapolis Raceway Park? Home cooking served him well there. Briscoe also kicked off 2016 by grabbing himself a Golden Driller at the Tulsa Shootout. Briscoe has spent most of his time since then just focusing on his NASCAR duties, but he’s made the Chili Bowl Nationals A-Main twice and he also grabbed a win on the dirt at New Hampshire Motor Speedway in 2024 with the Sprint Cars of New England. Briscoe is scaling back his dirt racing, but he’s still actively involved as a Sprint Car and Midget team owner of Chase Briscoe Racing.

A few years ago William Byron reminded the pavement Late Model world just how good he really is when he decided to do some more moonlighting while his Cup Series duties allowed. Byron won some big Super Late Model races just a couple of years ago like the Clyde Hart Memorial at New Smyrna Speedway in back-to-back years, the Orange Blossom 100, the Money in the Bank 150 at Berlin Raceway, and he picked up a guitar at the Nashville Fairgrounds Speedway back in 2022. It’s been a year or two now since we last saw Byron pilot a Super Late Model, but the straight rail car was an important building block in how Byron became the driver that he is now.

Lastly, there’s Denny Hamlin, the 44-year-old driver from Chesterfield, Virginia is still chasing his first NASCAR Cup Series championship. Back in the day, Hamlin won a track championship at Southern National Motorsports Park in Kenly, North Carolina in 2003, the year before he made his NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series and NASCAR Xfinity Series debuts. He scored 14 wins that year and finished third in the Southeastern Coastal NASCAR Weekly Series regional standings. Hamlin scored two wins in the Thanksgiving Classic, SNMP’s biggest race of their year, in 2003 and also in 2007. And he may not have won the ValleyStar Credit Union 300 at Martinsville Speedway, but Hamlin led 34 laps in back-to-back years in 2003 and 2004. He won the pole in 2003 before finishing 10th, and scored a podium finish in 2004, the last time he attempted Late Model Stock Car racing’s biggest race.

Even after moving to the NASCAR world, Hamlin stayed true to his roots and gave back to the Late Model Stock Car World by hosting the Denny Hamlin Short Track Showdown, an invitational LMSC race, at various tracks in the region over a handful of years. The Denny Hamlin Short Track Showdown was held at his home track of Southside Speedway for three years, then it called Richmond Raceway and South Boston Speedway home before Langley Speedway was the final track to host it in 2018.

And while none of this means that we have any idea who will be crowned the champion of the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series season on Sunday at Phoenix Raceway, we do know that it’s always fun to see what these four titans of the highest level of American motorsports do from time-to-time on the biggest stages of grassroots racing.