Chase Briscoe turned a week of heartbreak into redemption at Las Vegas Motor Speedway on Sunday, holding off Kyle Larson in a frantic finish to win the South Point 400 — his second NASCAR Cup Series victory of the 2026 season. Briscoe led a race-high 175 of 267 laps, swept both stages, and banked 75 points to climb two spots to sixth in the championship Chase standings, five races from the finale.
Briscoe dominates after last week's Kansas heartbreak
Seven days earlier at Kansas Speedway, Briscoe passed Larson late and looked certain to win — until he hit the wall in the closing laps and finished fourth. On Sunday, with Larson again bearing down on him with under 10 laps to go, Briscoe refused to let it happen twice.
"I'll be honest, with about 35 to go, I was like, 'I don't know if I'm going to be able to pull this off,'" Briscoe told PRN from victory lane. "The end was just a cat-and-mouse game. Especially after last week, you just don't want to lose two in a row with under 10 laps to go."
Briscoe's No. 19 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota was the class of the field all evening. He won Stage 1 ahead of Christopher Bell and Stage 2 over Austin Cindric — his first stage wins of the year — and piled up 75 of a possible 76 points, missing a perfect points day only on the fastest-lap bonus.
Chaos at the finish: Larson and Reddick crash out of turn 4
With one lap left, Larson had trimmed Briscoe's lead to less than half a second and made one final push off the final corner. He got loose, overcorrected, and pounded the outside wall — collecting third-place Tyler Reddick in the chaos.
"I got loose and overcorrected and thankfully made it to the finish line, and thankfully Reddick did too," Larson told PRN. "A bummer to not win, but a lot better than where I thought it'd be."
Larson limped his No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet across the line in second, while Reddick spun across the infield grass and slid down pit road, somehow still holding third. The margin at the flag was 1.376 seconds, though the racing at the end had been far tighter than that suggests.
Chase standings: Larson still leads, Briscoe surges
Despite the wreck, Larson — the two-time Cup Series champion — remains the series points leader and has now stretched his cushion further. Briscoe jumped to sixth and sits 84 points behind Larson with five races remaining in the Chase.
Austin Cindric was fourth for his second straight top-five, followed by teammate Ryan Blaney in fifth. Rounding out the top 10: William Byron, Chase Elliott, Bubba Wallace, Shane van Gisbergen and Joey Logano. Pole-sitter Denny Hamlin endured a miserable evening — a lap-88 spin, a stalled car that forced a restart from 23rd, and a 16th-place finish that leaves him 40 points behind Larson.
With the win — the seventh of his 211-race Cup Series career — Briscoe joked he might not have survived the team flight home had he let another one slip away. "I don't think I woulda been able to get on the plane," he quipped. "They woulda all kicked my butt."
Watch: Chase Briscoe wins at Las Vegas — race recap and highlights shows the closing laps, the final-corner crash, and Briscoe's victory-lane celebration.
Takeaway
Briscoe's dominant-but-nervy win keeps him firmly alive in the 2026 championship hunt while Larson keeps banking points even on a bad night. With five races left and Hamlin bleeding points, the Chase battle is tightening at exactly the right time.
Sources: USA Today race coverage, Sports Illustrated, Frontstretch.