Meet the final four drivers vying for NASCAR’s Cup Series championship

By the time the sun sets over Phoenix on Sunday, we will have a new NASCAR Cup Series champion, the last man standing after nine months, a 26-race regular season, a nine-race playoff and, finally, a 312-lap throwdown on the rugged 1-mile flat semi-roval that is the Phoenix Raceway.

Here they are. The 2021 NASCAR “Four Horsemen of the Car-pocalypse.”

For those of you unfamiliar with NASCAR’s title format, in stark contrast to the points system that gets us to this final event, what these four drivers need to do to win it all is shockingly simple.

Since 2014, four drivers have come to the season finale as the final four title contenders, hitting the reset button and starting at zero. When the checkered flag is flown on Sunday night, the highest finisher among those four wins stock car racing’s most coveted prize, the NASCAR Cup Series championship. No confusing bonus points or stage wins any of that. Just beat the other three cars.

History says for anyone wanting to be the champ, that result will have to be a win. Since the current Championship Four model started, the champion has also won the final race all seven times.

So, who are this year’s Championship Four, how did they get here and how have they run at Phoenix in years’ past? We’re so glad you asked, because we’ve already done the homework for you.

No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevy
Championship Four appearances: 1
Best championship finish: 6th, 2019
2021 key stats: 9 wins, 19 top 5’s, 25 top 10’s, 2,474 laps led, 2 DNF
Career at Phoenix: 14 starts, 0 wins, 5 top 5’s, 8 top 10’s, 72 laps led, 1 DNF

Larson is on the cusp of finally delivering on the wunderkind promise that came with him when he arrived in the Cup Series full time in 2013, and it’s been an even more difficult climb than he could have imagined, having been exiled from the garage for an inexplicable dropping of the n-word on a live stream video game telecast during 2020’s pandemic lockdown.

He has made the most of the second…