NASCAR Cup Series Championship contender Denny Hamlin is hoping rival Kyle Larson has a disastrous afternoon at Martinsville. The 2026 Cup Series champion will be crowned in the next two races at Martinsville or at Homestead-Miami, with Larson leading Hamlin by 73 points in the Championship.

He also leads Hamlin's JGR teammates Christopher Bell by 74 points and Chase Briscoe by 79. By the end of Sunday, Larson could end up being crowned champion with a race to spare - which would be his second consecutive title.

However, in a boost to Hamlin's chances, he qualified on pole position and will start on the front row alongside JGR teammate Ty Gibbs, with Larson starting the row behind in Third. Hamlin is NASCAR's most "winningest" driver not to win a Cup Series title, and it was Larson last November who cruelly denied the future Hall of Famer in overtime in Phoenix.

Hamlin had been leading for the large majority of the race and was cruising toward the title before a late caution allowed Larson to undercut the No. 11 on pit road and finish ahead. This season, Hamlin was crowned the regular-season champion and entered the "Chase" with a 25-point advantage over the other 16 drivers.

However, his 55-point advantage over Larson quickly evaporated. Larson has finished outside the Top-10 just once in the 10-race "Chase," and all three of his 2026 wins have come in the postseason, allowing him to leapfrog Hamlin and Co., and build up a sizeable lead in the standings.

Hamlin is now left hoping that Larson has a torrid day at Martinsville. Though recently such days have proved to be few and far between for the No. 5. "Something catastrophic needs to happen to Larson," Hamlin said ahead of Sunday's action. "If you do have a fighting chance, Homestead is a place where Larson is good on the wall; hopefully he cuts a tire."

Still, Hamlin remains optimistic this weekend. Martinsville is a track he has won at six previous times. "I felt very, very good about it," Hamlin said of his qualifying lap. "I mean, it was good enough where I did not need to see a lap time. I knew coming off Turn 4 it was enough. And so that's a really good feeling. I'm just the jockey on the horse that made today happen."

Hamlin is clinging to his title hopes. He's almost a full race of maximum points behind Larson and can't afford to be outscored on Sunday. "I think that we've performed great in certain aspects, and I think that there's been other times where we've kind of stubbed our toe when it was a big moment," Hamlin said.

"Certainly, 2010 was one that really sticks out to me where patience could have been a little bit more executed there. And there's always been races here and there.

"The difficult part is you don't know when those key moments are until afterwards, right? And because of the sport and the formats and things like that, you just never know when those key moments are.

"And if we come up 18 points short, it's going to be like, 'God ... Phoenix.' You know? But what can I do about a flat tire? So there's always moments that are clutch moments, but you just don't know until the exact moment of when that is.

"And I thought that last year at Phoenix, we did what we had to do. And it didn't work out in the end, but that was what the format asked us to do, and we did it.

"It was just an unfortunate caution at the end that changed things, and that's our sport. This is not a 1-v-1 situation. This is a 1-versus-36, and driver No. 18 that has nothing to do with anything in the championship can play a factor in what your result is, and so that's what makes it a little different and hard to define exactly what a clutch moment is."