We're going to keep saying it, because we just won't get sick of it. The Daytona 500, and the 2026 NASCAR season, are just a month away.
We more or less know who's driving what next year, and we know where they'll be doing it (including on an active naval base in San Diego, which should be an absolute blast).
With calendars now well and truly turned away from 2025, it's time to look ahead rather than backward. These are the things we're watching out for in the NASCAR Cup Series in 2026.
The emergence of Carson Hocevar
Carson Hocevar is an incredibly talented, and focused, race car driver. Absolutely nobody who's watched him race will dispute that. However, a couple of years into his Cup Series career, he's at a point which demands a breakout.
2025 saw him drop two places from a Spire Motorsports-best 21st in the standings the previous year, and he's still yet to visit victory lane in the Cup (although two second-place finishes last year promise good things).
A win in 2026 could move the mercurial 22-year-old from the group of interesting young drivers into the class of true contenders – and earn him a move to one of the teams where winning is expected, not merely hoped for. From there's the sky's the limit.
Is this the year 23XI break into the big boys club?
23XI Racing grabbed more attention off the track than on it last year, with their long-running lawsuit against NASCAR a prominent sideshow from start to finish. Having earned a favorable settlement last month...is it time to start challenging the established order on track too?
That's closer than it looks. While Tyler Reddick might've taken a step back last year in terms of wins, he actually had a very solid year – ranking eighth in pure points over the 36 race-season, just ahead of Bubba Wallace in 11th.
This is a team with a fast set of cars, two near-elite drivers and more experience by the year. With a little more luck in the right spots, we could be talking them up with JGR, Hendrick and Penske as perennial title contenders soon.
Connor Zilisch...good, great, or Godzilisch?
NASCAR's next Great Young Hope hasn't failed so far in his career. Hell, since he entered racing he'd barely finished a single season outside the top three, no matter the series.
The step up from a great Xfinity Series team to a fairly good Cup Series setup, though, will test him like never before. We'll be 21 races into the year before Zilisch's 20th birthday, and the expectation will be enormous for a driver who broke records in his one and only season in Xfinity last year.
We know he's good. While 2026 won't be close to a make-or-break year, we'll all be waiting to see whether the kid who's passed every career test with flying colors will plant his flag early as a potential great of the sport.
What's going on with this new championship format, then?
Daytona is next month. Tell us what the championship format's going to be. We know you've already decided.
The SVG reckoning
Now, here's a thing. Shane van Gisbergen might already be the best road course driver in Cup Series history, but – coming into his rookie season at 35 – he always seemed like a curiosity. A ringer who wouldn't ruin everyone else's days at ovals.
There's one thing that almost nobody accounted for. What if he...learns how to race on ovals really quickly? The last six ovals of his 2025 season, the Kiwi either finished in the top 15 or qualified top-15 and was taken out of the race in a wreck, excepting the finale at Phoenix.
The sight of the No. 88 car running the top line and absolutely eating up its rivals became common in the second half of the year, and...look, this shouldn't be happening. But what if it does? What if four or five wins on road courses and a newfound competitiveness on ovals is, in fact, enough to be on the edge of a title fight? Not a favorite – but potentially good enough to play a role, if only as a spoiler.
Do the old guys still have it?
Kyle Busch hasn't won any of his last 93 Cup Series races. Brad Keselowski's number got up to 60 at Phoenix (after breaking a 110-race winless streak Darlington in 2024).
The thing is, the historic rivals have totalled six second-place finishes since Keselowski provided their last collective win. They've 16 top-five finishes. Denny Hamlin's proved that being on the 'wrong' side of 40 isn't an impediment to being a competitive Cup Series driver in the 2020s.
Can RCR provide Busch a car to take him to one last win? Can Keselowski help his team over a hump which somehow saw them with three of the top four drivers on the playoff bubble last year? Do the old guys, as they say, still got it?
Finally: The Denny Hamlin championship
It felt like the stars had aligned for this in 2025. The narrative was all set up...until William Byron's tire blew with less than a minute to go until Denny Hamlin's coronation.
It felt unspeakably cruel in the moment to steal away the then 44-year-old's first ever Cup Series title. Just two months later, Hamlin has changed the face of the sport in court, lost his father to a tragic house fire and seen his mother seriously hurt by the same fire.
NASCAR's script writers blew their shot to write Hamlin a perfect exit in 2025. The least they can do it make it up to him this year.
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