Truck playoffs head to Kansas after Bristol turmoil

NXTbets Pro | Published On: September 25, 2026

Kansas Cup race

Kyle Larson carried the Cup playoff lead into Kansas Speedway on Sunday for the Hollywood Casino 400, and he did it with a slim cushion. Larson held a one-point edge over Denny Hamlin after opening the postseason with three straight top-five finishes. He finished fifth at Darlington, won at World Wide Technology Raceway and took second at Bristol. That win at World Wide Technology Raceway ended a 51-race victory drought and pushed his playoff surge to a 56-point swing from the start of the postseason. Hamlin stayed in range, but he arrived at Kansas with finishes of 18th, ninth and eighth in the first three playoff races. The Kansas event will also start a stretch of three consecutive playoff races on 1.5-mile tracks, with Charlotte and Las Vegas next on the schedule. That run gives the Cup field a familiar pattern to navigate, and Larson enters it with momentum, results and a narrow lead that sets the tone for the next phase of the postseason.

Truck playoff race

The NASCAR CRAFTSMAN Truck Series is moving to Kansas Speedway for Saturday’s Race to Stop Suicide 200 after the Bristol opener, and Layne Riggs enters as the top seed. Riggs led Kaden Honeycutt by three points entering Kansas, but his margin had already been tested. Late-race problems at Bristol nearly erased a 25-point lead, and Riggs finished 32nd after leading the first 135 laps. That opener also produced Jake Garcia’s first series victory, giving the field a new winner before the playoff picture shifted west. Giovanni Ruggiero sat fifth in the standings, 39 points behind Riggs, and he backed that up with a sixth-place finish at Bristol as the highest-finishing Chase driver. Grant Enfinger and Christian Eckes were the only former Kansas winners in the Truck Chase field, and both brought experience into the event. Enfinger entered Kansas sixth in the standings and Eckes was eighth, giving the playoff group a pair of drivers with track history as the series returned to a 1.5-mile oval.

1.5-mile stretch

Kansas matters because the playoff calendar now leans heavily on similar tracks. The Cup race at Kansas will open a three-race run on 1.5-mile ovals, with Charlotte and Las Vegas following. The Truck Series faces a similar pattern, since three of its final six postseason races are scheduled on 1.5-mile tracks. That makes Kansas more than a single stop. It is the first checkpoint in a stretch that can reshape both playoff brackets without the field leaving the same style of circuit. The Cup standings remain tight at the top, with Larson ahead of Hamlin by one point. The Truck standings are close too, with Riggs only three points clear of Honeycutt. Ruggiero remains in striking distance in fifth, while Enfinger and Eckes give the field two prior Kansas winners to measure against. With Bristol already in the books and Charlotte up next for the trucks, the playoff races now move into a sequence built around the same kind of speedway racing, and the leaders in both series have very little room to relax.