Chase Briscoe’s engine let go on lap 78 at Homestead-Miami, and the championship fight went with it. Kyle Larson, running fourth when the stage ended, had just clinched a third Cup title with 189 laps still to run. Crew chief Cliff Daniels relayed the news, and Larson asked whether it was really over. For the Toyota drivers chasing him, the questions started at once. Kevin Harvick had a pointed answer.

“I still think that Bell had plenty of speed to win the championship. But you look back at Talladega and spinning out coming to Pit Road and crashing. You look back at the very next week speeding on Pit Road at Martinsville, racing, you know, up for the lead.”

“It’s just, we could go through each car and come up with those moments where they were key moments in a race or just a moment during a race that just took them out of contention, and I think it was just a pile of them as you look at those moments,” Harvick said on his Happy Hour podcast. 

Christopher Bell arrived at Talladega five points behind Larson. While leading under green, he spun entering pit road on lap 56 and hit the inside wall. A week later at Martinsville, a speeding penalty cost him track position, though he recovered to finish tenth. By Homestead, the deficit was 67 points, and Bell finished 49 behind in second.

Ryan Blaney’s slide came in smaller pieces. A brake rotor exploded at Gateway while he ran in sixth, leaving him 35th. At Bristol he led 202 laps and was fighting for second when Carson Hocevar took him out, ending his night in 33rd place.

“In the end, you hear the saying, ‘Don’t beat yourself.’ They beat themselves. And I still think that they had the speed and the capability from the machines to be able to do what they did. They just didn’t execute and they didn’t make it happen when it was crunch time over the last 10 weeks.”

Blaney did win the finale, passing Tyler Reddick on lap 266 of 267, but Larson had already clinched. He finished fourth in the standings, 94 points back.

Series history offers precedent. In 2010, Denny Hamlin led Jimmie Johnson by 15 points entering Homestead after a fuel and lug-nut stumble at Phoenix. He spun, finished 14th and lost the title by 39 points.

 In 2019, Hamlin’s crew taped his grille too aggressively on a green-flag stop, the engine overheated and he finished tenth. Crew chief Chris Gabehart admitted, “We beat ourselves right here.” Harvick led 41 laps that night but waited too long for his final stop, hoping for a caution that never came.

Bell lived a version in 2024, when a last-lap wall ride at Martinsville tied him with William Byron for the final Championship 4 spot. NASCAR dropped him from 18th to 22nd, and the four lost points handed Byron the berth.

Kevin Harvick knows the other side: in 2014, Hamlin stayed out on old tires at Homestead and Harvick, on fresher rubber, passed him for the title.

Kyle Larson’s No. 5 team played its own game

Kyle Larson became the first driver since Johnson’s five straight titles to win back-to-back championships, even after admitting Hendrick Motorsports had one of its statistically weaker years.

“You look at a Cliff Daniels, right? Like, they’re making things happen, and they’re making those key calls. And that five-team and even Larson, right? You didn’t see the speed and penalties. You didn’t see the mistakes on pit road.”

“You didn’t see them. They were setting the strategy, they were playing their own game when they needed to make big adjustments, and they just did it, and then they moved on,” Harvick explained.

“Yes. I mean, if you’re going to beat him, you’re going to have to join him, right? You’re going to have to figure out how to have that elite level of preparation with a leader like Cliff Daniels. He’s set the bar at a totally different level of leadership.”

“I mean, can you name another crew chief that has the type of leadership that Cliff does? Because I can’t name one. I mean, how many drivers are going to openly talk about their book club? Like Kyle Larson did,” Harvick said.

Harvick also cited Joey Logano’s No. 22 team. “Those are the things that when you get to those championship weeks that the elite guys just aren’t going to do. And we talk about elite guys.”

“We saw it 22 team as well, right? They didn’t have the speed that the Toyotas do, but usually they’re the guys that grind their way to a win or a finish because they’re not making any mistakes.”

Daniels, with a third championship alongside Larson, tied for fourth all-time among Cup crew chiefs.