Is NASCAR's Chase already down to a two-horse race?

The NASCAR Cup Series championship is far from being decided. But halfway through the Chase, it's increasingly looking like a two-man race.

Kyle Larson and Denny Hamlin are the guys. So far, they've been the guys in both performance and the headlines, and their rivals have been letting them get away. Las Vegas Motor Speedway, the race that marked the halfway point in the postseason, was another example, as only three drivers in the top eight made up any points on Larson - but none made up enough for it to really matter.

Las Vegas might have been the championship-deciding race.

Larson, Cliff Daniels, and the No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports team popped the balloons of anyone who thought they were down and out. And with that, look away a little more of their rivals' hope that if the 5 team gets behind in future races, they’ll be out of the picture. What happened Sunday was a lesson that it’s not going to be that easy to beat them, and it’s a bold strategy to sit back and say, “Well, they can’t do this forever. We’ll just wait for them to have an issue.”

A 2.2 average finish will be very hard to sustain for five more races. But it’s not impossible to believe that Larson could average a top five or a top 10. And in that case, how far will he have pulled away from the competition before they realize it’s done and dusted?

Hamlin, meanwhile, could flip the script in one race. But we’re still waiting to see when that race will be.

It was a bad pit stop and then hitting the wall at Darlington. It was a bad pit stop and nearly being buried in the field (had it not been for a rash of cautions at the end) at WWTR. Bristol was an average night. A top three at Kansas wasn’t good enough. 

On Sunday, in hindsight, the call to pit on the first caution is up for debate because there was an opportunity to keep Larson on his back foot by denying him the chance to take the wave around. By pitting, that opportunity went away. However, once the call was made, the job shifted to maximizing it from there on out, and Hamlin was still in position to get stage points.

The call did not bury Hamlin in the field – he restarted 10th on fresh tires, with Larson still buried outside the top 20. But Hamlin threw it all away by spinning.

Chris Gayle didn’t spin the car. Hamlin did. He was only a few laps away from reaching the stage end, and while it wouldn't have been a stage win as it might have been had he not pitted, it was still points. It was points versus no points for Larson. Instead, Hamlin felt fourth wasn’t good enough and pushed too hard, spun, and got no points.

And then that ruined the rest of the day by damaging the car. Larson goes on to do what he does, and Hamlin loses points instead of possibly taking the point lead or being single-digit behind Larson.

For those who want to assign blame, it should be 50/50 between Gayle and Hamlin. The pit call is debatable, but the guy holding the steering wheel also made a mistake.

It wasn’t much better for the rest of the competition. 

Christopher Bell had to capitalize on Sunday at a racetrack that has been very good to him in the past, particularly in the fall. But a power steering issue took away a chance to fight for a possible top 10. Bell's dejection afterward was telling because he knew that was his chance, and admitting he is done thinking about points wasn’t conceit about the title but a recognition that it’s not worth counting or plotting; it’s all winning. 

Then you take the race winner, Chase Briscoe. An 84-point gap isn't impossible to overcome, but realistically, Briscoe needs to keep winning and get help from the five drivers ahead of him, and that seems unlikely. While others will look at Vegas as the race that ended their title hopes, Briscoe will look at Vegas as what could have been, because Kansas the week before ended his title hopes.

Had Briscoe been able to close out Kansas and then won for the second straight week in Vegas, this championship battle and narrative would look different. 

The eighth-placed driver in points, Ty Gibbs, trails Larson by 110 points. But aside from Larson and Hamlin, it’s hard to see anyone who has the strength to make a legitimate charge toward the championship based on what we have seen week to week through five races. Granted, things could change, but this seems to be a story of what could happen and what is more likely to happen.

What's more likely is that this title will continue to focus on Larson and Hamlin. So, going forward, it’s worth remembering, once again, that you cannot let Larson and his team hang around, and you cannot give Daniels the opportunity to keep improving the cars and put Larson in position to win at the end of a race. It was what happened a year ago when they won the title; it is how they’ve won races before, and it’s nearly how they won Sunday in Las Vegas.

And the way things are going, if the competition doesn’t start on one hell of a run, that’s how they'll repeat as champions.