most points<\/a> of any driver over the course of the 2025 season with the playoff format disregarded, it was only thanks to a late-race caution and a gutsy pit call from crew chief Cliff Daniels that snatched the championship out of Denny Hamlin’s hands and gave it to Hamlin.\u00a0<\/p>\nIt may not be fair to Larson, who simply played the cards he was dealt in regard to NASCAR’s playoff format, but there will always be a stigma surrounding his second title.\u00a0<\/p>\n
How Kyle Larson can return to dominance<\/p>\n
The only way to rid himself and the No. 5 team of that stigma? Get back to their winning ways in 2026.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It’s not as if Larson was bad in 2025. But his three-win total was his lowest since 2022, a year where he was eliminated in the second round of the NASCAR playoffs. On the other hand, his 22 top-10 finishes were his most in that category since his 2021 title season, where he had 26.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The key for Larson in 2026? Keeping that same level of consistency while also translating consistently running up front to more wins.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Three wins is far, far away from being a bad season, but for a driver the caliber of Larson, it’s not the peak of the mountaintop, either.\u00a0<\/p>\n
That was clear over the summer stretch of 2025, where after his Kansas win and subsequent poor showing during the Indy 500-Coke 600 “Double,” Larson and the No. 5 struggled to find speed. Over the final 14 races of the regular season, Larson had only three top-five finishes and seven top-10s. He also led only 68 laps during that span.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Larson didn’t win during the playoffs, but he did notch six top-seven finishes over the last seven races, with the wild card of Talladega being the only outlier.\u00a0<\/p>\n
As Larson looks to get back to victory lane and the championship stage in 2026, the garage should shudder at what a full-strength No. 5 team looks like as Larson tries to defend his title.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There’s a thought that should terrify the NASCAR Cup Series field going into 2026: Despite a consistent season…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":372788,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,634,82],"class_list":["post-372787","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nascar","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nascar","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372787","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=372787"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372787\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/372788"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=372787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=372787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=372787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}