NASCAR Cup Series winners and losers after Kansas Speedway

Sunday's NASCAR Cup Series race at Kansas Speedway was exciting right until the last, with a dramatic overtime finish to boot.

As with every week in the Cup Series, some drivers had a great weekend...and some came out of the race with a lot to work on.

Here, we've picked out just a few of them, explaining why they're on our minds heading to Talladega.

Winner: Tyler Reddick

What more can you say about the way the No. 45 has started the season? Victory at Kansas makes it five wins from nine in the 2026 season, a feat no Cup Series driver has pulled off since Dale Earnhardt in 1987.

Add that to Reddick being the first driver ever to sweep the first three races of a Cup season, and it's clear that the 23XI Racing driver is off to a genuinely historic start to the season through the first quarter.

NASCAR needs a new star driver. Reddick might be it.

Loser: Denny Hamlin's luck

Turns out Joe Gibbs Racing's star driver didn't leave his terrible luck in 2025 after all.

Still driving with a shoulder injury which seems likely to need off-season surgery, last year's Cup runner-up looked to have got the better of Reddick in a battle in the final laps, with the No. 45 short on fuel and running in second.

With two laps to go though, an eerie call-back to that championship race at Phoenix last year. A car completely out of the running (in this case last-placed Cody Ware) brought out a caution and forced overtime, leaving teams to choose two tires or four for the restart.

Hamlin made what ended up being the winning choice – two tires, like Reddick and the rest of the first four rows – but didn't get a push at the restart and got swamped by the 23XI man and runner-up Kyle Larson.

To add insult to injury, his 23XI co-owner Michael Jordan was clearly delighting in his misfortunate after the race. If it wasn't for bad luck, Denny wouldn't have any luck at all.

Winner: Chase Briscoe

Speaking of JGR drivers...Chase Briscoe had a nightmare start to the season, with catastrophic bad luck seeing him finish 11 laps down at Daytona before DNFs in two of the next three races.

That was nightmarish for his points situation in a season where points are more crucial than they have been for a decade – but he's got back on track since then, and third place on Sunday continues that trend and finally vaults him back into the postseason spots.

Briscoe was one of the frontrunners who took four tires heading into overtime, costing him track position but allowing him to speed past everyone bar Reddick and Larson in those dramatic final two laps. In the circumstances, it couldn't have gone much better.

Loser: Ryan Blaney

There are very, very limited opportunities to call Ryan Blaney a 'loser' in the normal usage of the word. He's a rich racecar driver with a wonderful family, astonishing moustache and a llama. The man is, in almost ever sense, a winner.

Not on Sunday though. One of the stars of the early part of this season just could not get his car right over the course of the 274 laps, and recorded his worst finish (24th) since the season opener at Daytona.

The long-awaited personnel change in his pit crew? It seemed to work...except for the tail-end penalty for too many crewmember(s) in contact with pit service area. Something to work on before fuel-saving begins at Talladega.

Loser: Trackhouse Racing

Justin Marks' upstart team came into this season with real hopes of getting at least two of its cars into the Chase after 26 regular season races. Now, more than a third of the way to that mark, not a single one of them is in the crucial top 16.

The fact that Shane van Gisbergen is on the fringes of contention (18th, Trackhouse's lead car) isn't a surprise – especially with three of the four road/street courses still to come – but Ross Chastain's lack of pace (20th in the standings, 26th at Kansas) is alarming, and Connor Zilisch is having the rookie season from hell.

How bad was this weekend? Not only did none of the team's cars finish on the lead lap, but Chastain was the best of the lot at two laps down, a few spots ahead of Zilisch. SVG? 36th, six laps down. This organization has an awful lot of work to do if they're to plant a car in the postseason.