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Kyle Larson won his third NASCAR title ... then came the sweetest revenge

So he would have appreciated the poke-in-the-eye demonstration by Kyle Larson and his team right after Larson claimed his third NASCAR Cup Series championship Sunday night.

✦ Extractive summary — built from the sources' own reporting•From 1 source•2 min read•Updated November 9, 2026, 9:15 PM UTC
Key points
  • https://t.co/m12o1oj4au pic.twitter.com/kArMU2Np2A — Hendrick Motorsports (@TeamHendrick) November 9, 2026 (Snickers isn't a NASCAR sponsor anymore, and when they were, they aligned with Joe Gibbs Racing, but this kind of positive exposure might entice them back.) Thing is, Hamlin was right, and Larson admits as much.
  • How are we going to pull through?' So to ultimately end up capping off the year with a championship, it's just insane." Larson raced well enough to finish the regular season seventh in the standings, but he didn't exactly roll into the playoffs as a serious threat.
  • Starting with that Gateway win and following through Bristol, Kansas and Las Vegas, Larson unfurled an astounding run, finishing 1-2-1-2 to surge to a massive playoff lead.

Kyle Larson all but clinched his third Cup title with a victory at Talladega in October.

"That was anticlimactic," Larson said, "but that's cool." "I thought I had to finish third [in the first stage] to gain the points I needed to lock it up," he said Monday.

Additional details
  • "Early in the year, it was just, like, 'Gosh, we're so bad right now,''" Larson told Yahoo Sports Monday morning, less than 24 hours after lifting the championship trophy.
  • He didn't even realize he'd clinched the title until, in an anticlimactic fashion, he was notified over the radio that he was the 2026 champion.
  • And then, boom, we went to Gateway the next week and won.
  • He had some decent early-season runs, including a second-place finish at Kansas and third-place finishes in Bristol and Phoenix.
  • But Larson basically broke the format by running so well in the first five races and outdistancing all challengers at Talladega.

How this summary was made: extractive summary — built from the sources' own reporting. It is drawn only from the reporting of the sources listed below — read the originals for full detail. How we summarize →

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Yahoo SportsNovember 9, 2026, 9:15 PM UTC →

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