On paper, Kyle Larson had the best possible ending to the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series season. A second championship, a season-long comeback arc, and a late-race showdown at Phoenix, where he finished ahead of every other title contender. What more could he ask for, right? But peel back the celebration, and there’s a far more complicated story hiding underneath for the Yung Money.

Because Phoenix wasn’t the smooth, confident march to victory many expected. In fact, Larson found himself locked in a quiet fight. And no, it wasn’t with Denny Hamlin. Rather, it was with the desert track itself. From the outside, it looked like Larson did exactly what a champion should: survive the pressure and rise when it mattered. But behind the wheel, the feeling was very different.

And that’s where this story truly begins, with the champion admitting Phoenix exposed something deeper.

Kyle Larson’s hidden Phoenix struggles

“We actually had a really good Friday and Saturday. Our car in practice had good speed, especially in long run, and felt like it handled a little bit better than normal Phoenix thing. And then we went into qualifying on Saturday, which was good. And then, I had high expectations for Sunday and just was never quite had the feeling that I had on Friday,” Larson broke down his Phoenix weekend on the NASCAR Live podcast recently.

During Friday’s practice, the No. 5 was second when it came to 10-lap average and topped the board in 15-lap speed. Then, a clean, sharp qualifying effort put him third on the grid. But the moment the green flag dropped, that Friday (and Saturday) feeling evaporated.

Larson immediately sensed the difference. The balance was off, the grip he expected on entry was gone, and the long-run stability he’d relied on in practice never materialized. Instead of charging forward, he found himself slipping back in the order. Through the first half of the race, Larson was stuck fighting dirty air, cycling in the top 10. However, this was in complete contrast with Denny Hamlin, who dominated most of the race in the first position, leading 208 laps.

Then came the moment that could have ended everything: On lap 214, Larson had a right-front tire failure. He limped his wounded car to pit road, losing crucial time and falling further behind the other Championship 4 contenders. Luckily, thanks to the caution brought out by a similar Byron incident on Lap 309, Larson was able to win the championship after finishing the highest among the four contenders. If the caution hadn’t come out, Larson wouldn’t have even thought of winning.

And the bigger truth is, Phoenix has never been kind to him. Larson himself admitted it. “It’s always been a track I’ve struggled at. So, somehow have to figure out how to get better there.” His record backs that up. Larson is yet to win a race at the desert track in the Next-Gen era. Compared to tracks where he dominates, Phoenix sits firmly in the “needs improvement” column.

Yet despite all of that, Larson did exactly what the championship format demands: he beat the other three contenders. And sometimes, that’s all it takes. Not perfection, not dominance, but survival.

The moment Hamlin realized he lost

Denny Hamlin ended the 2025 NASCAR season reliving a moment he never saw coming. Quite literally! On the final episode of Actions Detrimental, he walked fans through the exact instant he realized his long-awaited championship dream had slipped away in the final mile at Phoenix Raceway.

“It’s not until we cross the white flag and the cars fanned out and we went to the dog-leg and the cars fanned out to where you could see them all, and I saw the No. 5. I’m not kidding, and I’m not overstating — that was the first time I saw him all day. Not one other lap was he in front of us. I saw him right there with three quarters of a mile to go. I knew at that point, ‘Oh my God, it’s over.’ Like, at that point, I knew that he had won,” Hamlin explained.

And in a painful twist, Hamlin wasn’t wrong. He had dominated the afternoon, controlling the lead with a car that looked destined to bring home his first Cup title. But everything changed when a late caution reset the field. The race flipped upside down on pit road, where strategy, not speed, decided the champion.

Kyle Larson’s No. 5 team rolled the dice with two right-side tires, a gamble that launched him to fifth for the restart. Hamlin, sticking to the safer play, took four tires, which dropped him from the lead all the way to 10th. In a race where track position meant everything, the difference was catastrophic. Larson held his ground. Hamlin simply never recovered.

“I didn’t realize we had lost until three-quarters of a lap to go. And so that was the utter shock that I had, that I had to just kind of sit there for a few minutes after the race to just figure out what in the world happened,” he explained. Hamlin will regroup and reload for 2026, but the sting remains. His Phoenix heartbreak became the perfect and painful example of why NASCAR is openly evaluating playoff changes. Unfortunately for Hamlin, the lesson came at the worst possible time.