NASCAR Chase for the Championship Media Day
Charlotte Convention Center, Charlotte, N.C.
Overheard Quotes
The NASCAR Cup Series drivers met with the media in Charlotte on Sept. 2 to talk all things Chase for the Championship. Get a glimpse of what the contenders are thinking as they head into the 2026 Cup Series championship 10-round postseason. BMS will host round three on Sept. 19 with the crown jewel Bass Pro Shops Night Race.
Do you feel there is a championship favorite heading into the Chase?
“I mean no, I don’t really. I think it’s anyone’s game. I mean, look at how the points have swung over the year between first and second. So, I think it’s really going to be who performs the best for 10 races. I would really love to be the first seed, but I think it’s going to come down to who races well the next 10 weeks.” - William Byron, No. 24 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet
Thoughts on the extra noise and attention?
“Whether we run good or bad, there always seems to be some sort of talking point. But I enjoy it, I think it's funny a lot of times. Hopefully it's entertaining for the fans and TV and everybody. I'd much rather talk about something than nothing.” - Carson Hocevar, No. 77 Spire Motorsports Chevrolet
Thoughts on the tracks in the Chase?
“The faster tracks are better for us. Talladega is exciting. The most difficult one is going to be Martinsville for us, but all the other ones, we've run top-five or top-10. I feel good about them excitement-level wise.” - Hocevar
Which format has more pressure?
“This one, for sure. You don’t get bailed out at all. We set our points to what they are now, and you won’t get saved by a round. Yes, you won’t get eliminated, either, but you are not going to get saved by a reset. If you have two bad races, and win one, hey we survived and we moved to the next round. It is going to be a totally different mindset, and it will be interesting to see how that plays out.” - Tyler Reddick, No. 45 23XI Racing Toyota
Do you think your biggest competitors will be your own team at JGR?
“I mean, obviously they're all going to be really strong, but we're racing all of them too, so, I don't really like to narrow down on who it going be, so hopefully it's me at the end of the day.” - Ty Gibbs, No. 54 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota
Mindset going into the postseason?
“I think that the main thing is that you have to control what you can control. Sometimes, as a driver, we want to do too much and there’s only so much that is under our control. You know, the only car I can control out there is the No. 7 car and the No. 7 team. I don't care about what the other guys are doing or not doing. We have to just control what we can control, and if we can focus on that and maximize that, I feel that we're going to be in a pretty good spot.” - Daniel Suarez, No. 7 Spire Chevrolet
Thoughts going into the postseason?
“I don't know, I'm not as confident as I've been, for sure, in other years. But I wasn't, honestly, sitting here that confident last year, and we were able to win the championship. I know there's a path to do it. We did it last year without winning a race in the final 10 races, and we weren’t even really all that consistent, from what I remember. I think if we can be ultra-consistent in these final 10 races, there’s no doubt that I could see ourselves winning the championship. I mean, I could also see ourselves winning four or five races in the Chase. You know, things have to go perfect, but we do have a lot of good tracks for us in these final 10. We just need to execute at a high level, and I think our team is definitely capable of that. We’ll try and do our best.” - Kyle Larson, No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports
Did you look at it differently last year with the different format?
“Last year was a lot different, for sure. Last year, having the cutoff and only being focused, less about the cutoff and more about the reset. The previous format and system, it was just three races at a time. And if you had a bad race, it's just like survive. Just gotta get above the cut line, Got to get above the cut line. Once you get above the cut line, okay, we're in great shape now if you have a lot of bonus points or whatever. Where now, there are no freebies. You can't have a bad race and get a reset in three weeks. So, you're going to have to perform every week.” - Christopher Bell, No. 20 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota
Is this a Ryan Blaney versus Toyota championship?
“I wouldn’t say that. I think there’s a lot of other guys that can go out there and do it. All 16 teams in this thing, I think, are very, very good and can really go on runs, but the Toyotas are incredibly fast. We’ve seen that all year. I think the Fords, for myself and the 22, and the 2, and the 60, and the 17, I feel like we’ve had a really good last two or three months and closed the gap there. I’m curious to see where we’re at on the mile-and-a-halves, where we have those three in a row. That’s gonna be a huge sign of seeing where we’re gonna be and how we stack up with the Toyotas. And then you know the 5 and the 9 are incredibly good, too. So, I don’t think it’s us versus the Toyotas. It’s us versus 15 other people. That’s how I look at it.” - Ryan Blaney, No. 12 Team Penske Ford
How do you feel these tracks in the Chase line up for you guys?
“I think we have the opportunity to go perform well at every track. I said earlier the mile-and-a-halves are a place to where we know we have to continue to improve, and I feel like we’ve made steps from Chicago. Indianapolis isn’t a mile-and-a-half, but it’s a bigger track and the 22 had a heck of a run there, so that really shows me that we’ve made a step in the right direction. I’m just curious to see when we do get those – Charlotte, Vegas and Kansas – but then I think all of the other places we’ve had really good runs, but you can’t rely on that. You have to continue to try to improve, no matter if it’s your best racetracks or forms of tracks or tracks maybe you’ve struggled at. It’s all week to week type stuff, but I think we feel good about it. It’s just a matter of who can put the best 10 together and someone is gonna do that. Hopefully, we’re one of them that can do it.” - Ryan Blaney
A lot of people see this run you've been on and are like, 'Here we go again...' Do you enjoy that type of feeling?
“Absolutely. Yeah. And that’s a reputation that we’ve earned over the years is that, unfortunately, during the regular season we seem to just be OK, and then it gets to game time and the 22 starts to show up, so I feel confident in our team that we can do it. People think that way because we have done it and we’ve done it multiple times, so I feel like we can show up again when it matters and do it in a different format.” - Joey Logano, No. 22 Team Penske Ford
Thoughts on dealing with the Chase pressure?
“Maybe. At the same time, you’ve just got to focus on you. We are a tough team because we focus on ourselves and we don’t get caught up in a lot of the other garbage that’s around us. A team that just focuses on the job at hand and we don’t let pressure and outside noises get in the way of it, so I say it all the time – the more pressure you put on, the better they’re gonna be. Whether that’s myself as a driver, Paul as the crew chief, the pit crew themselves, they’re the type of team that wants the pressure and this time of year we’ve got it on us and we have it on us to start. Every team does in their own way, but for us to make up where we are in points right now, the pressure is on. We can’t have bad ones.” - Joey Logano
Thoughts on coming back from a huge deficit?
“It proves to me that you can come back from a long ways in a pretty quick time, and that’s one thing with this points format that we haven’t really explored yet. There’s been two cars that have done that. The 19 has done it and we’ve done it from a pretty long ways back and climbed their way up to where they’re in contention pretty quickly, so with that in mind, I feel optimistic about where we are in points, but there’s no reward until we get to Miami.” - Joey Logano
Does your opportunity to win the championship feel better this year than maybe last year?
“Yeah, I think so. Last year up until the Chase we weren't really that strong dominant team. Once the playoff started, we were arguably the one of the best teams. So yeah, last year, you know, when we started when we did this last year, I felt good about it, but I didn't really know what our true potential was. Where now I feel like we are more than capable of going and winning the championship. It definitely feels different from that standpoint. Like just internally, I would say myself, James (Small, crew chief), the entire team, we feel way better about this year than we did last year just because we kind of know what to expect and we also know what the expectation is now for ourselves just because we kind of do it week in, week out.” - Chase Briscoe, No. 19 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota
With the way Toyotas are performing throughout the regular season, are there expectations that come with that?
“I think it is expectations on both parties. On the drivers and the manufacturers. We do our best to give the best feedback to Toyota to build a race car that is the way that it is on track, and then the pressure of delivering in the race car that we want falls back on the drivers. Toyota has done so much for the sport, and so much for our teams in the Cup Series to give us absolute bullets to go out and drive each and every week, so it has been a lot of fun to be the manufacturer to chase and having that brand on your chest each and every weekend and driving that car. It goes hand in hand with each other.” - Bubba Wallace, No. 23 23XI Racing Toyota
Is the Chase more about quality or just consistency?
“Yeah, I mean, good performance was rewarded. You had to be good for all ten weeks. You know, I think it’s more in line with that kind of traditional year-long format. It’s not, obviously, but it is more in line with that. Ten weeks is a long time, you know, and things can change quick. There are examples of all of those things in a lot of those different scenarios. I look at, certainly, the dominance of Jimmie (Johnson) from 2006 to 2010. They just executed at a high level. They went to tracks where they were just far superior at and were able to piece together 10 really good weeks. But each one of those years were a little different. You know, they had battles right down to the wire some years. They had battles some years that were pretty well done come Homestead. So there was a little bit of everything. You look at the year that Tony (Stewart) won in 2011, if I’m not mistaken. He ran (bad) for the majority of the year. He had a couple good races right there at the end and started to get things going in the right direction. I think he won Chicago, if I’m not mistaken, the first week. And then, he ended up winning five of the 10 races. Who had him picked to win it that year? So, again, I remember them all very well.” - Chase Elliott, No. 9 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet
How important is it to get off to a good start?
“Yeah, I think it is really important to get off to a good start, if you can. For sure, it's not the end of the world if you don't. You know, I think through those years of watching it from the outside, it seemed like a guy that was a true contender could probably have a bad week, maybe two, and maybe climb his way out of it. But the more bad weeks you have, you’re going to have to be pretty darn good to make up for it. So, yeah, if you have a slip-up this weekend, you better be able to win. You better have the ability to win and do it often to climb out of a bad race or two.” - Chase Elliott
How is the postseason different from the regular season?
“I think it’s no different than the rest of the year. Each week is an opportunity to improve or regress, so I think you have to continue to just approach that week to week, race to race mentality. It is what makes our sport easier, I think, than other forms of motorsports just because most of them don’t race week to week and have the opportunity to bounce back each week, or at least have the opportunity to. I’ve always approached it that way, no different than it’s every lap. You have all these small little checkpoints you go through throughout the day and you hyperfixate on those enough to where you don’t think about anything else.” - Austin Cindric, No. 2 Team Penske Ford
How do you balance the hope of competing for a title and the reality of where you are right now?
“We’re optimistic that we can do great things here and simply being a part of this thing that if we hit everything right, and we can have a run at a championship. We have a lot of good tracks for us, but we’re also realistic in the fact knowing that it hasn’t been our season to this date, that we’ve been able to go to these places and hunt for the wins at all of them. We’ve had a couple of shining moments in a lot of race weekends that were just sitting in like the sixth, seventh or eighth window. We need to be better than that, so we’re optimistic about it, but we’re gonna be real at the same time that we can’t sit still. Blind optimism would just have us hoping for the best and it’s not gonna be hope that gets there, it’s gonna be a lot of work and getting better and really executing at the highest level.” - Chris Buescher, No. 17 RFK Racing Ford
How has the mindset changed on the 60 team after (winning Daytona)?
“It hasn’t. If anything, that same mentality has carried over and I think that’s what we’ve been missing. I’ve been missing. We’ve all been missing. I feel confident. At the end of the day, we’ve won two races this year – one points paying and one non-points paying – but why not? There’s only one place for us to go and that’s forward.” - Ryan Preece, No. 60 RFK Racing Ford
Is this your best chance?
“Uh, probably. There's been years where we've been really fast versus the field, things like that, but I've always known it's about that one race, and are you good at that one racetrack on a green-white-checkered finish, right? I think that it's a little different this time around, so I'm starting a little bit ahead, not as much ahead as I should be. But I'm a little bit ahead and I've got enough races to prove that we're the best.” - Denny Hamlin, No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota
How competitive do you think the Chase is this time?
“I'm looking forward to seeing where we're at five races in. And to think that five races in, that's over a month from now, and we're still just going to be halfway. I think everyone's going to realize pretty quickly this is a lot different format than what we've had in the past. We're going to see a lot of things that we think are huge moments, and they might be in retrospect when you look back. But we won't know them until the season's done in Homestead.” - Denny Hamlin
