- Four drivers from two teams, Joe Gibbs Racing and Hendrick Motorsports, will compete for the NASCAR Cup Series title.
- The championship contenders are Denny Hamlin, Chase Briscoe, Kyle Larson, and William Byron.
- This season finale could be the last to use the current one-race, winner-take-all playoff format.
Four drivers, two teams, one championship.
Following 35 races, the NASCAR Cup Series is set to crown a champion in the season finale Nov. 2 in Avondale, Arizona, when Phoenix Raceway hosts the 2025 championship race in what could be the final iteration of the current playoff format.
Two drivers from Joe Gibbs Racing – Denny Hamlin and Chase Briscoe – and two drivers from Hendrick Motorsports – Kyle Larson and William Byron – will race against each other and a full field of cars with one goal in mind: finish better than the other three contenders and celebrate with the championship trophy.
It’s a format and a situation that is unique to NASCAR. On the one hand, you have two titans of the sport – team owners Joe Gibbs and Rick Hendrick – each with a 50% chance of claiming a title. The owners also happen to be good friends.
‘To get to the Final 4 is just so hard. So now we got one race,’ Gibbs said this week. ‘We know what we’re up against, somebody that’s really, really good. Two cars in there for them. Two for us.’
The drivers, on the other hand, not only have to compete against two racers from another team but also against a teammate to realize their championship dreams.
‘It’s going to be an epic battle,’ said vice chairman of Hendrick Motorsports Jeff Gordon, who won four NASCAR championships as a driver. ‘You got four cars, two organizations, that are going to give it everything. It’s going to be (a) fascinating week of preparation, seeing how it unfolds at the racetrack in Phoenix.’
Final four worthy
The four championship contenders enter the finale with impressive season statistics. Hamlin has the most wins in 2025, Briscoe the most pole positions and top-five finishes, Byron the most laps led and Larson the second-most top 10s and the second-most laps led.
‘Denny, Chase, Kyle are amazing competitors. We’re going to have to do everything we can do (at Phoenix) to win that one, too,’ Byron said after his victory at Martinsville Speedway to clinch his berth in the Championship 4.
Each of the four also brings a unique storyline to the finale.
Larson, 33, is the only driver among the four to have won a Cup Series championship (2021), and a second would put him in elite company. He could join Hall of Famers Gordon (four championships) and Jimmie Johnson (seven) as the third driver to win multiple Cup titles for Hendrick.
The 27-year-old Byron, who drives the No. 24 Chevrolet made famous by Gordon, could become just the sixth driver and the first since Johnson in 2013 to win the Daytona 500 and the NASCAR Cup Series championship in the same year. The others: Hall of Famers Lee Petty, Richard Petty, Cale Yarborough and Gordon.
Briscoe, 30, made the championship in his first year at Joe Gibbs Racing after taking over the No. 19 Toyota following the retirement of 2017 Cup Series champion Martin Truex Jr. Briscoe had an up-and-down first half of the season as he adjusted to a new car and team, but he was arguably the best driver in the second half, recording three wins and 10 top-five finishes and capturing six of his series-high seven poles.
And then there is the veteran, Denny Hamlin, who is seeking to add the one thing missing from his Hall-of-Fame resume: a NASCAR championship. The 44-year-old has won 60 races during his Cup career – tied for 10th on the all-time list – and, despite the fact that he is more than a decade older than any of the other final four drivers, he led the series with six victories in 2025.
Yet, it’s fair to wonder if this is Hamlin’s best and final chance to remove the moniker, ‘Best driver to never win a championship.’
‘Is this my last chance to do it? Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t,’ Hamlin expressed after earning win No. 60 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. ‘I just know I’m going to do the work, and I hope it works out. If it doesn’t, I’m going to be OK with it. I’ve had a season that far exceeded what I thought it would.’
Change on the horizon?
This also might be the end of the one-race championship and possibly the 10-race playoffs. NASCAR has formed a committee with its stakeholders to examine the current format and explore changes or perhaps a massive overhaul of the system following complaints for years from both drivers and fans.
NASCAR’s goal when it introduced the current format in 2014 was to provide ‘Game 7’ moments comparable to the big team sports. And while there has certainly been plenty of on-track excitement in the past decade as four drivers duked it out for a title each year, the counterargument has been that a winner-take-all race not only dilutes the full 35 races that came before it but even the nine playoff races that precede the championship race.
So, as these drivers seek to etch their name in history with a Cup Series title, one could make history in another way: the last driver to win a championship in this format.
‘A lot of real bright people are thinking about our playoffs and is this the right format for us going forward,’ Gibbs said this week. ‘The one thing I would say, one race, man, it is tough because things can happen to you that are out of your control in that one race.
‘We got two cars in it. This is a thrill when we get here because it is exciting. You got one race to make it happen. That’s the way I look at it, so we got to find a way. I’m sure Rick (Hendrick) is thinking the same thing.’