Three NASCAR Chase Contenders, Three Very Different Paths To Glory

LOUDON, NEW HAMPSHIRE – JUNE 23: Tyler Reddick, driver of the #45 SiriusXM Toyota, and Ryan Blaney, driver of the #12 Menards/Dutch Boy Ford, race during the NASCAR Cup Series USA Today 301 at New Hampshire Motor Speedway on June 23, 2024 in Loudon, New Hampshire. (Photo by Jonathan Bachman/Getty Images)

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Sixteen drivers. Ten races. One champion.

That is where NASCAR finds itself after a long season of noise, speed, wrecked racecars and the occasional outbreak of common sense.

Yes, 40 drivers will still take the green flag each week, but when the final checkered flag falls in November, only one will be crowned NASCAR Cup Series champion. And that driver will come from the 16 who now make up the Chase.

Fans will focus on that field. Sponsors will enjoy the additional exposure. And for the drivers involved, the next 10 races represent something considerably more serious than what they faced in the first 26 races.

Among those 16 are three drivers who have arrived at the Chase by taking very different roads.

Ryan Blaney has already worn the crown, winning the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series championship. This season, he has been the model of consistency, winning three times, scoring four poles and posting six top-five and 17 top-10 finishes.

Tyler Reddick, meanwhile, was NASCAR’s hottest driver when the weather was still cool. He won five of the first nine races, including the season’s first three, beginning with the Daytona 500.

Then summer arrived, and things seemed to ice over.

Reddick and his 23XI Racing team endured five finishes of 35th or worse, including several races that ended with the sort of results teams would prefer to discuss only after everyone has gone home.

Then there is Carson Hocevar.

The 23-year-old, happy-go-lucky Spire Motorsports driver won at Talladega, but has also provided a reminder that youthful exuberance and experience do not always arrive at precisely the same time. His aggressive style has occasionally resulted in wrecked racecars and a growing list of people in the garage who won’t be sending him Christmas cards.

Each enters the Chase with something different to prove.

“I feel like our group is hungrier to win the second than we were to win the first, because you’ve kind of experienced that and you want to share that moment with your people again.” Blaney said. “It just motivates you more.

“Hopefully we’re poised to make a run at it again. So I don’t really know if we’re wanting something to prove, but I think our hunger level for trying to win a second championship together is as high as it’s ever been.”

For Hocevar, someone not too far removed from being a teenager, the approach is considerably simpler.

Have fun.

“I think for us, it was just proving we could be in the Chase and enjoying that,” he said. “there’s a lot of really, really good guys in this. And just being a part of this top half is something to strive for. I mean, you got to start somewhere. And my guys take a lot of pride in that.”

Hocevar added that they do not really feel they have much to prove because few people expected them to be in the Chase.

“So, we’ll just see where it shakes out.”

This is Tyler Reddick’s third championship run, and his previous two appearances are something of a microcosm of his 2026 season.

In 2024, he ran deep into the postseason and made the final four. Last season, however, his team imploded early, and he finished the year ninth in the standings.

In the past few races, though, Reddick has shown signs of improvement. Perhaps the team is heating up again just as fall, and cooler weather, approaches.

“It just feels like we’re at a really good place where the cars have been amazing,” Reddick said. “We got great people. The pit crews developed to a really good spot. And Michael (Jordan) and Denny (Hamlin) have given us the right pieces to be able to go out there and contend for it.

“Are we going to prove it this year or not? Ultimately that’s on us to put up the fight all 10 races long.”

So the three drivers have different ideas about what they need to prove. They also have differing views about whether anything needs to change when the Chase begins this weekend at Darlington Raceway.

For Hocevar, there are no surprises.

It is still about having fun.

“I don’t know what changes for us,” he said. “You know, we get to just enjoy it. Spires first time experiencing the Chase and everything in our whole team. So for us, really, it’s just 200 employees that get to really just enjoy this and have fun with it and get to go racing. So that’s really how we’re going to try to approach it.”

Consistency is what earned Blaney the No. 2 seed in the Chase, and he sees little reason to suddenly reinvent the wheel.

“I think the way the Chase is now of really awarding the consistency over 10 weeks is the correct way to do it,” Blaney said. “I was a fan of it when they announced this is what they were going to do. You’re going to really see the teams that can dig in and be in the trenches for 10 weeks straight, come out on top. So it’s going to be an exciting one for sure. There’s a lot of teams that can pull this off. It’s just a matter of you hope that your team can be in contention.”

Reddick, meanwhile, is not trying to forget the miserable summer. Instead, he hopes the lessons learned while fighting through it will become an advantage.

“I think for us, just how we fought through the bad days over the summer will be very beneficial,” he said. “But yeah, above all else, you know, I definitely think you’ll see some, what’s the word? You’re going to see a lot of movers and shakers in the Chase, like just, it’s kind of like Ryan pointed out. I mean, you can score a lot of points in a day… I think the points are going to move around quite a bit as this thing gets going.”

If all three drivers can survive the first nine races of the Chase, have fun, stay consistent and perhaps score a win or two along the way, they could find themselves racing one another for the 2026 NASCAR Cup Series championship in the season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway on November 8.

And if that scenario plays out, there is a rather obvious question.

Which of the other two drivers would you least want to see in your rearview mirror during the closing laps?

Among the three, only Reddick has a Cup Series win at the South Florida track. That victory came in 2024, when he held off Blaney by just .241 seconds.

Reddick said his hope is that he will not need to worry about either one.

“Hopefully I’ve pulled away enough,” he said with a chuckle. “But honestly, yeah, Blaney’s pretty good at ripping the fence there. I don’t think I’ve raced around Carson a lot at Homestead, but I feel like I’ve seen him. He’s pretty good at figuring that out. So it’s hard to say.”

Blaney also had to laugh.

“I was about to say, I don’t mind seeing both of them in the rearview,” Blaney said. “That means I’m in front of him. But I did have that luxury at Homestead (in 2024), and Tyler ripped around me. But maybe I learned from that. But yeah, if both of them are behind you, then it means you’re doing something right. Just don’t do what I did (in 2024) and let Tyler make me look like an idiot.”

Hocevar, meanwhile, would simply like to be part of the equation when NASCAR arrives at Homestead.

“My camera, my rear-view camera’s broke every now and again,” he said with a grin. ”If that’s the case, that just helps me out a lot because then I don’t even have to worry about it.

“I just hope we’re at least somewhat in the equation of the top 10 at Homestead, let alone for the championship.”

For now, that may be the biggest difference between the three. Blaney expects to contend. Reddick believes his team is capable of returning to championship form. Hocevar is simply happy to be invited to the party.

But after 10 races, none of that matters much. At Homestead, assuming all three survive the journey, the only thing that will matter is who is in front when it counts and that the view in the rearview mirror will be considerably more important than the one they see today.