On the final lap at Talladega last October, Kyle Larson was leading the overtime restart when his car ran out of fuel on the backstretch. Chase Briscoe slipped past on the inside and won the race. One lap changed two drivers’ championships, and neither could have planned for it.
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Kevin Harvick had that kind of moment in mind when he previewed this Sunday’s YellaWood 500 on SPEED With Harvick and Buxton.
“Talladega is just its own beast, and it’s so easy to get tangled up,” he said.
This year, the usual chaos comes with three extra problems on top of it: the points, the history, and a rules package nobody has raced.
The points are tight, and that’s where Harvick started. Larson left Phoenix with a five-point lead over Christopher Bell after a late tire failure left him 34th. Briscoe is 24 behind, Denny Hamlin 31, Ryan Blaney 40, Joey Logano 44, and Tyler Reddick 56. That makes seven drivers inside 56 points.
Harvick said stage points and the race winner can decide who stays in the fight. If one or two contenders get torn up, he added, “that’ll dictate who’s in contention as we leave Talladega.”
He also laid out the opposite case. If someone outside the Chase, or deep in it, wins and the contenders don’t pile up big points, “nobody really gains or loses in that position.” In that case, he said, “You’re not going to see as big a swing.”
Phoenix shows how big a swing can be. Reddick won and scored 61 points while Larson scored three. This ended up moving Reddick 58 points closer to the lead and cut his deficit from 114 to 56. A maximum day is 76 points. The winner gets 55, and each stage winner adds 10, and there is one extra point available for the fastest lap.
NASCAR also changed the stage lengths at Talladega. The stages now end on laps 98 and 143, with the finish at lap 188, which makes the final stage 45 laps. The original plan was 60-120-188, but NASCAR went back to the layout used in the spring race. So basically, stage lengths of 98-45-45 instead of 60-60-68.
History is the second variable, and Harvick said it doesn’t favor the points leader. Reddick won at Talladega in April 2024, which was his first superspeedway victory. Larson has not won there, though he did finish second in April 2025. He was 40th this April, caught in a 26-car crash on Lap 115.
Hamlin has won twice at Talladega, in 2014 and 2020, but both wins came before the Next Gen car arrived. Harvick noted that Hamlin hasn’t been a consistent front-of-the-pack contender in the draft since then.
Will Buxton raised a different angle on Reddick. Reddick opened 2026 by winning the Daytona 500 and then Atlanta, and he won five of the first nine races. Adding to that, he said, “I’ve got a funny feeling about Reddick. When you look at this season and the way it started… I don’t know, man, there would be something kind of kismetic about him riding that start of the year, going off the boil, coming back, and then just finishing the season as he started it.”
The third variable is the car itself. NASCAR changed the superspeedway package for the August race at Daytona. The rear spoiler went from seven inches to four, and horsepower dropped from about 510 to 465. For Talladega, NASCAR cut the spoiler again to 3.5 inches. Harvick pointed out that “nobody’s raced with this particular rules package.”
The problem is that nobody has raced under this exact package before. And without practice, teams will have limited opportunities to understand how the cars behave in the draft, how quickly runs develop, and how the pack responds to different moves.
Drivers will qualify and then go straight into race conditions, learning about the new package while the points are on the line. A setup or strategy that looks promising on paper might not work as expected once the field begins running in tight groups.
The contenders know the risk. JGR crew chief Chris Gayle, speaking about Hamlin’s title chances, said “it’s not over” because the 19, the 5 and the 20 could all have trouble at Talladega. Hamlin would be right back in it.
Meanwhile, Bell told Motorsports Today he will have to race all out the rest of the way, and called Talladega a “wild card” that you hope breaks your way. Reddick said that if he has a calm day, gets stage points and finishes with the car in one piece, he’ll have another good points day.
Larson sees it too. After Phoenix, he told reporters his team has done well at superspeedways and wants to execute and get points. Last year’s fall race at Talladega had 77 lead changes among 27 drivers, according to Jayski. That was the most at the fall race since 2011.
Harvick’s point is that no one can plan for every piece of Talladega at once. A wreck can erase a contender’s lead in a few seconds. A late move can hand a win to someone with no title hopes. A new rules package can change how the packs run before anyone has tested it.
“There are so many unknowns going into Talladega this week,” he said, and from a fan’s view, “it is going to be intense and fun to watch.”
Three races remain: Talladega, then Martinsville and Homestead-Miami. By Sunday evening, the Chase could look very different. The drivers will have to find out the same way fans do.