A month ago, Kyle Larson looked like anything but a championship favorite. After a year-and-a-half without a win, the Hendrick Motorsports star was part of a Chevrolet camp that appeared to be searching for answers. Now, Larson has flipped the script completely. Two Chase wins and four straight top-five finishes have put him firmly in control of his title pursuit. But just as the No. 5 begins to look untouchable, Denny Hamlin is urging everyone to slow down before declaring the championship race over.

“And we had this discussion on the plane, Jared. And I said, yeah, if Kyle Larson is going to continue to have a 2-point-something average finish, you’re right. It’s over. But it’s not going to happen. It’s not going to be that way. So, I just think you guys need to take a breath and relax,” Denny Hamlin said on the Actions Detrimental podcast.

It is difficult to argue with the numbers behind the Larson hype. The Hendrick Motorsports driver has turned his Chase campaign into a remarkable turnaround, moving from seventh in the standings when the 10-race championship fight began to the points lead after just three races. He opened the Chase with four consecutive top-five finishes, including wins at World Wide Technology Raceway and Kansas Speedway.

Kansas was where the No. 5 Chevrolet truly appeared to separate itself from the field. Larson led 235 of 267 laps, swept both stages and collected the fastest-lap bonus on his way to a 76-point day. It was a maximum-points performance that stretched his advantage and gave Hendrick Motorsports another reminder that its difficult regular season did not necessarily reflect what the team could produce when the championship was on the line.

That is precisely why Hamlin’s argument is less about questioning Larson’s current form and more about challenging the assumption that it can continue indefinitely. A driver can dominate one stretch of the season and still find the equation changing quickly. Hamlin has experienced that himself, and Tyler Reddick provides perhaps the clearest example from 2026.

Reddick looked almost untouchable when the season began. He won the Daytona 500, followed it with two more victories and eventually collected five wins in the first nine races. He led the standings for the opening 17 races and built a 129-point advantage by the middle of the spring.

Then the momentum disappeared. Reddick went through a brutal stretch that included five finishes of 30th or worse across 12 races. Denny Hamlin eventually moved past him, and Reddick entered the Chase as the No. 3 seed rather than the runaway championship leader he had looked like earlier in the year.

His Chase has only reinforced Hamlin’s point. After Kansas, Reddick sat seventh and 111 points behind Larson. The No. 45 Toyota had lost 50 points to the leader in that race alone.

Hamlin’s own season has followed a similarly fluid pattern. He spent much of the regular season at or near the top of the standings and entered the Chase as the No. 1 seed. Yet after Kansas, he had fallen 26 points behind Larson despite finishing third at the track.

Joey Logano offers another reminder that the championship picture can change without warning. The Team Penske driver entered the Chase with two victories and then won at Bristol, moving to within 16 points of Larson after three postseason races. That victory also moved him up to third in the standings at the time.

Kansas changed that picture again. Logano finished outside the top group and lost 51 points to Larson in the standings, leaving him fourth and 67 points behind the leader. That rapid movement is exactly what Hamlin is asking fans to remember.

His own example is brutally simple. A driver can have a bad pit stop, restart in the wrong position, and suddenly find himself in someone else’s wreck. He pointed to Reddick’s Michigan disaster as the kind of incident that can erase a strong race without the driver suddenly becoming slower.

The same danger applies to Larson. He can have the fastest car in the field and still lose points because of circumstances outside his control. A bad pit stop, an unfortunate restart, or contact from another driver can turn a dominant afternoon into a major setback.

That does not diminish what Larson has accomplished. His Kansas performance was another statement from a team that spent much of the regular season searching for answers. But the Chase is still a 10-race championship battle, and the variables Hamlin mentioned have plenty of time to intervene. After all, the identity of the driver everyone considered the benchmark has already changed several times this season.

Hamlin’s larger point is that NASCAR rarely allows one narrative to survive untouched for long. Reddick went from seemingly unbeatable to fighting to recover. Logano surged into contention before Kansas pushed him back. Hamlin himself held the advantage before Larson took it.

So even with Larson producing the kind of Chase start that makes the championship look increasingly secure, Hamlin is asking everyone to remember one thing: four races can establish a trend, but they do not control what happens next.