Who Can Still Win It?
Here Is the Math.

NASCAR CUP · THREE RACES LEFT

Seven drivers in the real fight. Talladega is next.

Kyle Larson entered Phoenix with a 49-point lead. He left with a five-point lead.

That is how quickly this can change.

Larson had a tire failure and finished 34th. Christopher Bell finished fourth and pulled almost all the way to him. Tyler Reddick won the race and dragged himself back into the championship picture.

Those seven are separated by less than one maximum-points race. The other nine Chase drivers are mathematically alive because 225 points remain available, but mathematics and a realistic path are not the same thing.

What Larson has to do

Larson does not need to win every remaining race. He needs to keep scoring, avoid another disaster, and finish the season ahead of everybody else. There are no eliminations and there is no one-race championship round. The points keep adding up through Homestead.

Nobody can clinch at Talladega. Too many points will remain available at Martinsville and Homestead.

What everybody else has to do

Bell needs to gain six points to leave Talladega with the lead. Briscoe, Hamlin, Blaney, Logano, and Reddick need stage points and strong finishes. A victory is worth 55 points before stage points are added, so winning matters more than it did under the old system.

For the nine drivers more than 100 points back, the job is much harder. They need near-perfect races and trouble for the leaders.

Talladega is exactly the kind of place where that trouble can happen.

FORMULA 1 · SIX GRANDS PRIX LEFT

Kimi Antonelli can win the championship in Austin.

Antonelli leads George Russell by 102 points. Lewis Hamilton is 111 back. Max Verstappen trails by 119, Charles Leclerc by 125, and Lando Norris by 139.

Those are the six drivers who retain a mathematical chance. Antonelli is the only one who can finish the job this weekend.

If Antonelli does not win, the title fight continues to Mexico. That is a hard set of results to assemble. It is also a real chance to clinch.

Russell and Hamilton need to stay close enough to keep the math alive. Verstappen, Leclerc, and Norris need to beat Antonelli and probably win. Verstappen has won the last two Grands Prix and the Singapore Sprint. His problem is not current speed. It is the 119 points he gave away earlier.

MOTOGP · FIVE WEEKENDS LEFT

Two points between Martín and Márquez.

Jorge Martín has 355 points. Marc Márquez has 353.

Two points.

Marco Bezzecchi is still a real threat at 309, 46 points behind Martín. Five weekends remain, and each weekend offers points in Saturday’s Sprint and Sunday’s Grand Prix.

Martín has almost no cushion. He needs to keep finishing ahead of Marc Márquez. Márquez does not need help. If he outscores Martín by three points over the remaining five weekends, he takes the lead.

Bezzecchi needs victories and both leaders to give away points. The riders farther back need something close to a miracle, but they have not been eliminated.

Nobody can clinch the MotoGP title in Australia. There will still be 148 points available after Phillip Island.

MOTO2 · FIVE RACES LEFT

Five and a half points separate the top two.

Manuel Gonzalez leads Izan Guevara by 5.5 points. That half-point looks strange, but it counts. Racing points do not become less real because the number is inconvenient.

Guevara has won three races in a row. Gonzalez finished second in Indonesia and kept the lead.

Gonzalez controls his result. If he finishes ahead of Guevara in every remaining race, he wins the title. Guevara needs to gain six points. One more victory with Gonzalez behind him could do that immediately.

The other five riders need wins, poor days from both leaders, and almost no room for error. Nobody can clinch the Moto2 championship in Australia.

FIA WEC · ONE RACE LEFT

One race. Two Toyota crews.

Toyota has clinched the Hypercar manufacturers’ championship. The drivers’ championship remains open.

The No. 8 crew of Sébastien Buemi, Brendon Hartley, and Ryō Hirakawa leads with 114 points. The No. 7 crew of Mike Conway, Kamui Kobayashi, and Nyck de Vries has 97.

That is a 17-point lead with one six-hour race left at Monza.

What the No. 8 has to do

A top-five finish guarantees the championship, even if the No. 7 wins and collects the pole-position bonus point. The No. 8 can also take the title with a lower finish if the No. 7 fails to collect enough.

What the No. 7 has to do

The No. 7 needs to gain at least 18 points. The cleanest path is victory, the pole bonus, and the No. 8 finishing sixth or worse. Other combinations depend on where both cars finish and, in some cases, the championship countback.

That is endurance racing. Six hours can still come down to one qualifying point.

The LMGT3 title

The No. 33 TF Sport Corvette leads with 92 points. The No. 92 The Bend Manthey Porsche has 74, the No. 34 Racing Team Turkey by TF Corvette has 70, and the No. 69 Team WRT BMW has 66.

The No. 33 guarantees the title with a top-five finish. The other three need a big result and the Corvette well down the order. The No. 69 needs a perfect score merely to reach a possible tie.