NASCAR Cup Series regular-season title a battle of Hendrick, Toyota teammates
INDIANAPOLIS – It was a couple hours after winning the Brickyard 400 and Kyle Larson didn't know how many points he had gained on teammate Chase Elliott in the regular-season point standings.
Winning a race at the iconic Indianapolis Motor Speedway will make anyone forget about the standings.
But as the NASCAR Cup Series regular season enters its final four weeks — albeit after an upcoming two-week break with the season resuming Aug. 11 at Richmond — the battle, and possibly the angst, for the regular-season championship will build.
And much like the playoffs themselves, it can come down to a battle among teammates.
With the victory, Larson leads his Hendrick Motorsports teammate Elliott by 10 points. 23XI Racing driver Tyler Reddick is 15 points behind and Reddick's boss — 23XI co-owner and Joe Gibbs Racing driver Denny Hamlin — is 43 points back.
"I've seen our teams communicating and sharing information and working together more this year than I ever have," Hendrick vice chairman Jeff Gordon said "It feels like because all the teams are having you know success and all the teams are seeing the benefits of that amount of communication going back and forth. They're bought in on it."
The Hendrick and Gibbs/Toyota drivers are used to competing against one another, especially when it comes down to the championship race. Last year, Hendrick teammates William Byron and Larson both were among the four finalists, with both coming up short.
Larson and Elliott have had their tense moments, with Larson using up Elliott on a restart at Watkins Glen in 2022, a move he said he wasn't proud of and later indicated he wouldn't do again.
"It's pretty clear at Hendrick how we expect teams and drivers to race against one another and how they've got to go and compete — not only against their competitors but against one another," Gordon said. "They have a pretty good understanding about that"
And that is?
"We want them to go race and race hard, but we want to come out the other end in one piece and may the best team the best driver will get that regular-season championship," Gordon said. "Right now, we just want to be one of the two and if they can be 1-2, those guys are going to have to race for it. We support that."
Check out the top moments from Kyle Larson's win at the Brickyard 400!
The regular-season championship is worth more than a trophy. The regular-season champion earns 15 playoff points, while the runner-up gets 10. With a regular-season race win worth five playoff points, the championship is worth three wins. Playoff points can make the difference in advancing if a driver doesn't win in the three races of a playoff round.
Larson said the communication among the teams is strong.
"Competing for a regular-season championship with Chase ... is cool," Larson said a few days before the Brickyard. "It means our teams have done a good job. Then you have Reddick and Denny in there as well.
"It's extremely tight at the top. It makes you be on your game, and we've been a little bit inconsistent lately with some DNFs and stuff but hopefully, we can finish out the regular season pretty strong. It'd be nice to get those 15 bonus points."
The last month of the regular season consists of a variety of races — Richmond (0.75-mile oval), Michigan (2-mile oval), Daytona (2.5-mile superspeedway tri-oval) and Darlington (1.36-mile egg-shaped oval).
Larson, with the Brickyard win, leads the series with four victories this year. Elliott and Reddick have one apiece while Hamlin has three. The difference? Larson has three races this year where he didn't finish (and also missed the race at Charlotte earlier this year) and Hamlin has failed to finish three races as well.
Reddick has only failed to finish one race, while Elliott has been running at the finish of every event.
"There's still a lot of racing left is kind of how I look at it," Elliott said a couple of days before the Brickyard. "A lot can happen in that period of time. It's going to force all of us to be really good. You're going to have to be really solid.
"You're probably going to have to win a race or two between now and the end of it to have a legitimate chance without other guys having problems, which I don't really see four or five guys having a ton of issues between now and then. Not all of them at least."
Reddick indicated that when a driver has an issue, the others need to capitalize.
"We've done a good job of capitalizing on their bad days," Reddick said earlier in the week.
And that proved the case Sunday. Hamlin getting wrecked out put him in a deep hole and Byron being wrecked out pretty much knocked him out of contention for the regular-season crown. Reddick and Elliott (10th) for the most part did enough to keep within striking distance of Larson.
"We've done a good job of capitalizing on their bad days," Reddick said.
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Reddick is relishing this battle. Of the four drivers, he is the only one who really hasn't been in position to win a regular-season championship or a Cup championship. Elliott and Larson each have a Cup title to their name, while Hamlin has 54 career Cup wins.
"It's a lot of fun racing with those guys," Reddick said. "Obviously, Denny's my boss. Me and Chase don't have a lot in common or a lot of history, but me and Kyle Larson grew up racing each other as kids.
"So it's just cool, being in the top level of racing in America, having this opportunity to race against guys I grew up with and guys that I looked up to when I was a kid watching NASCAR on Sundays."
Bob Pockrass covers NASCAR for FOX Sports. He has spent decades covering motorsports, including over 30 Daytona 500s, with stints at ESPN, Sporting News, NASCAR Scene magazine and The (Daytona Beach) News-Journal. Follow him on Twitter @bobpockrass.
