NASCAR

The 2026 INDYCAR season has ended and Alex Palou has captured his fifth series championship. That fifth title — which is also his fourth consecutive — keeps the debate alive about where Alex Palou sits among the sport's greats. If you've been keeping up, then you already know that he's not on my Mount Rushmore. But he is moving on up. Here are the 10 best INDYCAR drivers of all […]

Carson Hocevar swears he won’t change. He will use the same style for The Chase that kept him above The Chase cutline for the entire regular season. The same style that got him his win at Talladega. The Spire Motorsports driver has appeared to stop caring about what other people say and think. "We raced how we raced, and I think we've done a pretty good job with it," Hocevar […]

Denny Hamlin can’t have more days like the one he had at the Southern 500. A bad pit stop dropped him into the pack, and he got caught up damaging his car while battling for position. He made the most out of what could have been a disastrous day and only lost 13 points off his lead. But another one of those and he’s no longer at the top of […]

Christopher Bell had a simple plan on how to win races in a year when he has had seven runner-up finishes and no victories. "The same way that we finished second seven times, that’s how we’re going to win in The Chase," he told me Wednesday. He did just that on Sunday night. He took our tires on a pit stop and outdueled the competition over the final 24 green-flag […]

The new NASCAR Chase is actually a little bit old. NASCAR has gone back — mostly — to the championship system it had from 2004-2013, where the eligible drivers compete in a 10-race mini-season and the driver with the most points wins the title. But the 2026 version is different. Back in the "OG Chase" era, no one had even heard of stages and stage points. Plus, a victory being […]

Charlotte Convention Center (Charlotte, N.C.) — Much of the talk of the 2026 Chase has been about the format, Denny Hamlin and Carson Hocevar. So, in our annual anonymous survey of Chase drivers, we asked questions that centered primarily around those topics. Drivers filled out the one-page form in front of one of our producers, who then took the sheet, folded it and put it in a little tote bag. […]

Charlotte Convention Center (Charlotte, N.C.) — Maybe the 20th time will be the charm. Denny Hamlin enters his 20th version of NASCAR playoffs. For a driver who ranks ninth all time with 64 career victories, he enters The Chase with the same storyline as the last several years. Will he finally win a title or is his fate to be the best driver who never won a championship? "I've felt […]

The first race of the NASCAR Cup postseason will get the green flag this Sunday, Sept. 6 at Darlington. Drivers will take the track for the Cook Out Southern 500 as The Chase makes its comeback. It's fitting that Tyler Reddick and Denny Hamlin are tied atop the early board. Reddick secured his fourth win of the 2026 season at this very track; Hamlin enters the weekend as the favorite […]

Who has the best chance to win the 2026 NASCAR Cup Series title? Welcome to the FOX Sports Contender Rankings. Now that the regular season is over, the focus is on the 16 drivers in The Chase. I have ranked the top-10 contenders based on what I believe their chances are to win the title and will update each week with a short outlook to the upcoming track. On The […]