Five down, five to go, with the No. 5 pulling away

Kyle Larson is still the NASCAR Cup Series championship leader as the Chase hit the halfway mark, and as he’s done since taking the lead, he further extended it on Sunday afternoon in Las Vegas. An early setback with an ill-handling race car was not enough to keep the No. 5 team down, and Larson rebounded to finish second and gain 14 points on Denny Hamlin.

Only two drivers in the top eight in the points standings left Las Vegas having made up points on Larson. But those two drivers, race winner Chase Briscoe and Tyler Reddick, are still well behind the eight ball and will need to keep winning races and see their rivals struggle to find themselves to have a shot at the championship.

Briscoe and teammate Ty Gibbs were the only two drivers, in fact, who moved in the standings of those who entered the day inside the top 10 in points.

On the flip side, two other Toyota drivers, Christopher Bell and Tyler Reddick, might have been the most disappointed. Bell remains winless at Las Vegas, but worse still, a power steering issue kept him from capitalizing at one of his better tracks.

“I don’t know, I think I’m done thinking about it,” Bell said of the points. “We’re just going to go out there and race. It’s disappointing not to be able to capitalize on a day like today when other guys had issues with the (No.) 5, having that pit stop issue and losing some stage points. The (No.) 11 had his issues.

“So, it looked like it was an opportunity to make up some points, and it didn’t happen. Yeah, just going to go out there and race; got five more and try to win a couple.”

Reddick did gain on leader Larson, but hardly. Once again, the team struggled to run cleanly and had to fight through issues like a slow pit stop. It was clear in Reddick’s demeanor afterward that while it’s expected at this point in the season, it’s frustrating.

On his points situation, Reddick said, “Man, I don’t know. We gained five points. whoop-de-doo. We have to capitalize when we have Toyota Camrys as fast as these. We have to win those races, and the key to that is being clean and executing, and we just haven’t done that in a very long time.”

Here are the Chase standings after the fifth race:

1. Kyle Larson

2. Denny Hamlin – 40

3. Christopher Bell – 55

4. Joey Logano – 71

5. Ryan Blaney – 80

6. Chase Briscoe – 84

7. Tyler Reddick – 106

8. Ty Gibbs – 110

9. Austin Cindric – 128

10. Bubba Wallace – 137

11. Carson Hocevar – 158

12. William Byron – 160

13. Chase Elliott – 163

14. Daniel Suarez – 195

15. Chris Buescher – 196

16. Ryan Preece – 200

Charlotte Motor Speedway is the next stop in the postseason, which is also the final race in a three-race intermediate stretch.