Ryan Blaney wins Homestead finale as Kyle Larson clinches third NASCAR title

Ryan Blaney settled a two-year-old score at Homestead-Miami Speedway on Sunday, November 8, passing Tyler Reddick on lap 266 of 267 to win the NASCAR Cup Series Championship Race by 0.314 seconds. The Team Penske driver started ninth, survived an early pit-road incident, and made the decisive move coming to the white flag in the 267-lap, 400.5-mile season finale.

It was Blaney's fourth victory of the 2026 season, the 21st of his Cup Series career, and his first at Homestead. Two years earlier, Reddick had beaten him with a last-lap pass on the same 1.5-mile oval. This time the roles reversed, and Blaney held on through the final lap to take the chequered flag.

While Blaney celebrated the race win, the championship belonged to Kyle Larson. The Hendrick Motorsports driver had already clinched his third Cup Series title long before the finish, securing it with a fourth-place finish in the opening stage. Larson finished the race 12th, but the trophy was his from the first 80 laps onward.

A pass two years in the making

Blaney's path to victory was anything but smooth. After a late caution for Daniel Suarez spinning out, the field bunched for a restart with seven laps remaining. Blaney restarted fourth, passed Christopher Bell on lap 263, slipped past William Byron a lap later, and then made the winning move on Reddick off Turn 4 as he took the white flag.

Reddick, who led the Cup circuit with six victories in 2026, finished second, followed by Byron in third, Bell in fourth and Bubba Wallace in fifth. Denny Hamlin came home sixth. Tyler Reddick won the first stage and Hamlin the second, but neither could match Blaney when the race was decided in the final laps. Byron's third place was his third consecutive top-three finish to end the season, while Bell's fourth was his career-high 16th top five of 2026.

"Every time I come here, that race haunts me," Blaney said after the race. "I kind of gave that one away. I didn't do a very good job at the end of that race. Learned from it."

Post-race inspection found no issues with Blaney's No. 12 Ford, and NASCAR confirmed the results and the final standings, closing the technical review of the 2026 season.

Larson's title was settled in Stage 1

Larson arrived at Homestead as the overwhelming favourite. He entered the weekend with a 67-point lead over Christopher Bell and wrapped up the title early: a fourth-place finish in Stage 1 earned seven stage points and put the championship mathematically out of reach.

The stage ended under caution after pole winner Chase Briscoe's engine failed on lap 78. From there, Larson could race freely, and he did — brushing the outside wall more than once on his way to a 12th-place finish in the No. 5 HendrickCars.com Chevrolet.

The title is Larson's third, after 2021 and 2025, and his second in a row. He is the first driver to win back-to-back Cup Series championships since Jimmie Johnson, who won five straight from 2006 to 2010, and the 11th driver in NASCAR history to win three or more Cup titles, joining a list that includes Richard Petty, Dale Earnhardt and Johnson. It was also Hendrick Motorsports' 16th Cup championship.

A season turned around in the Chase

Larson's route to the title was remarkable for how late it arrived. He carried a 51-race winless streak into the final weeks of the season, a drought stretching back to May 2025, before winning three of the first nine races of the 10-race Chase. He finished outside the top 12 only once in the Chase and ended the season with 21 top-10 finishes and 15 top-fives.

The final standings confirmed the scale of his advantage: Larson finished 49 points clear of Bell and 56 ahead of Hamlin. Blaney ended the year fourth in points, 94 behind Larson, with Reddick fifth.

For Blaney, the win was redemption and a reminder of how fine the margins are at Homestead. In 2024 he lost this race on the final lap; in 2025 he won the finale while Larson took the title; in 2026 he did both again, winning the race while Larson celebrated the championship. NASCAR's 2026 season ended with its two biggest prizes split between the driver who wanted revenge and the driver who wanted history — and both got exactly what they came for.