Chase Briscoe’s engine blew on Lap 78 of the Cup Series finale Sunday, ending his race and sealing Kyle Larson’s third championship.
The caution froze Stage 1 with Larson in fourth, ending the title fight with 187 laps left and torpedoing pole-sitter Briscoe’s push for second in the standings.
“For sure disappointing. I felt like we had a really good opportunity to potentially finish second in points or at worst finish top four in points which is still a big deal and that obviously won’t happen now with with blowing,” Briscoe said after his departure from the race.
Briscoe said that the engine failure caught him by surprise.
“We were one of the fastest cars there on the track and just in the middle of three and four there I was on the gas already and it just all of a sudden kind of vibrated and I honestly thought it was a tire coming apart. And then yeah, I noticed when I came off the corner onto the straightaway, it just didn’t really run like it normally does and then it went up in smoke.”
Briscoe won the pole at 166.687 mph on Saturday, his second of 2026 and his first at Homestead. He edged teammate Denny Hamlin by 0.017 seconds to get there, leading a Toyota 1-2-3 in qualifying that put Larson fourth.
Chase Briscoe Engine Failure Clinches Title for Kyle Larson
Larson needed just nine points to clinch the championship no matter what his rivals did. Bell and Hamlin needed an all-but-perfect day, a race win and trouble for Larson to keep the fight alive. Larson scraped the outside wall several times during the weekend but still qualified fourth. He also held a 67-point cushion on Christopher Bell and a 70-point edge on Hamlin.
Larson was battling Bell for third place when the engine let go. The yellow flag froze the order at the end of the stage, locking in the points Larson needed, and NASCAR confirmed the title. It was the race’s first caution, which gave the field a chance to pit before Stage 2. Tyler Reddick won the stage ahead of Ryan Blaney and Bell, according to The Racing Experts.
It is Larson’s third Cup title and second straight, making him the first back-to-back champion since Jimmie Johnson in 2010.
Joe Gibbs Racing’s Chase Briscoe Faces Standings Hit
Briscoe led early, but a sluggish 16-second pit stop on Lap 35 dropped him outside the top five, according to The Racing Experts. Corey Heim’s Toyota had gone to the garage with engine trouble, making it one of two Toyota engines lost in the opening stage, a development Motorsport.com flagged for the remaining Toyota-powered cars.
Briscoe entered the finale fourth in the standings, 84 points behind Larson. He had a real chance to reach second place, according to Motorsport.com, and the failure will cost him. He had been just 24 points behind Larson entering Martinsville, though NASCAR’s Racing Insights gave him only a 1.3% chance at the title. A 14th-place finish ended his title hopes there.
The 31-year-old two-time Southern 500 winner from Mitchell, Indiana, earned his first Cup victory at Phoenix in 2022. He replaced Martin Truex Jr. at Joe Gibbs Racing in 2025 and won three races, finished third in the points, and reached the Championship 4 despite tire problems throughout the Phoenix finale.
His 2026 began with just one point in each of three of the first four races. He rebounded to win three times, including a Charlotte finish where he held off Bell by 0.029 seconds.
Briscoe will return to the No. 19 in 2027 on the multiyear deal he signed in 2024. The race, meanwhile, rolled on without him, with the title settled and second place in the standings still to be decided.
WATCH VIDEO: Chase Briscoe Out of NASCAR Championship Race in Dramatic Incident