It may seem just like yesterday that the rain-drenched Daytona 500 saw William Byron emerge with the checkered flag, but it’s been eight-and-a-half months since the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series began. After 35 races, including the first points race outside of the United States in over 60 years—courtesy of the Viva Mexico 250—the Cup Series has finally reached its endpoint. The 2025 NASCAR Cup Series Championship Race will take place on Sunday, with a new champion crowned.
Last year’s champ, Joey Logano, was eliminated from contention in the Round of 8, leaving just the quartet of Byron, Denny Hamlin, Kyle Larson, and Chase Briscoe in the Championship 4. They will battle over 312 laps at Phoenix Raceway, and while they’re the only ones who can claim the cup, NASCAR at Phoenix will have a full field of 38 drivers. Whichever of the four has the best finish will win the Cup Series championship, and there is more than just bragging rights on the line for the other 34 drivers in the field, as if any of them win, then they get the biggest share of the $12.4 million purse.
Here’s a look at how each of the Championship 4 stacks up this season, over their careers, and at Phoenix Raceway.
Kyle Larson
The only one of the four that can already call himself a Cup Series champion, Larson won back in 2021 in his first season with Hendrick Motorsports. He nearly claimed a second two years later before finishing as runner-up, and Larson has established himself as one of the most consistent drivers at Phoenix Raceway. Besides winning at the track in 2021, he’s notched top-five finishes in four of his last five starts at the dogleg oval.
That includes a third-place finish earlier this year in Phoenix, but earlier this year is also when all of Larson’s victories came. He notched three checkered flags over the first dozen races but hasn’t seen Victory Lane since then. If he’s able to triumph on Sunday, then Larson would become the 18th driver with multiple Cup Series championships, and he’ll also extend Hendrick Motorsports’ record as it would be its 15th team championship.
Denny Hamlin
If there’s a sentimental favorite, it’s Hamlin, who is considered the greatest NASCAR driver without a championship. Now in his 20th full-time season on the Cup Series, Hamlin’s closest finish was in 2010 when he entered the final race leading the Drivers’ Championship, only to spin out, place 14th in the race, and finish as runner-up for the championship to Jimmie Johnson.
Hamlin has had not only a sensational season, but an amazing year as he’s won six races and welcomed the birth of his son. He’s also unparalleled when it comes to Phoenix Raceway, as the 10.6 average finish for him at the track is the best of any contemporary NASCAR driver.
However, he hasn’t had as much Phoenix success as of late, despite a runner-up in the spring Phoenix race, as prior to that, he had six straight starts without a top five. The 44-year-old is hoping to bring Joe Gibbs Racing its first Drivers Championship since 2019 and its sixth overall.
William Byron
Byron has been the best driver all year, as evidenced by his season-opening win at Daytona and his victory in the Cup Series regular-season championship. However, since NASCAR began awarding a regular-season championship in 2017, just three of those eight winners have gone on to win the overall championship. Byron won his third race of the year last week at Martinsville, and he can also call himself a NASCAR Phoenix victor, courtesy of a triumph in 2023.
Like Hamlin, Byron also rides for Hendrick Motorsports, so he clearly has the backing of a team familiar with producing champions. But Byron has struggled at 1,000-mile tracks, as a whole, like what he’ll see on Sunday. Since that 2023 Phoenix win, he’s zero for 13, with as many finishes outside the top 20 (four) as inside the top five. This is the third straight year that Byron has made the Championship 4, as he finished fourth in 2023 and third in 2024.
Chase Briscoe
The biggest longshot in the Championship 4 is Briscoe. It was just last week that he had car issues at Martinsville that led him to retire early and finish dead last. He and his Joe Gibbs Racing team hope to rectify those issues in 7 days and complete his breakout season with an exclamation point. Briscoe was 14th in the Cup Series a year ago and finished in 30th place in 2023, so his mere appearance in this final round is quite the surprise.
But it’s an appearance well deserved, as Briscoe’s three wins this year are more than he had over the first four years of his Cup Series career combined. One of Briscoe’s five career wins did come at Phoenix Raceway back in 2022 while with Stewart-Haas, while an accident had him place 35th in his lone NASCAR Phoenix start with JGR. Although Briscoe had a pair of runners-up at Gateway and Dover earlier in 2025, his overall success at 1,000-mile intermediate tracks has been fleeting as he has just one victory over 23 career starts on these circuits.
Either Joe Gibbs Racing or Hendrick Motorsports will hoist the Bill France Cup come Sunday, as each team has a pair of drivers in the Championship 4. This is the final year that Phoenix Raceway will serve as the permanent host of the NASCAR Cup Series Championship Race before the track joins a rotation with other tracks, starting with Homestead in 2026. The green flag for the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series Championship Race will drop at 3 p.m. ET on NBC, putting a bow on the 77th season of the Cup Series.
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