The 2023 NASCAR season comes to an end on Sunday afternoon. After 35 Cup Series races this year, the drivers will compete in one final race, the 2023 NASCAR Cup Series Championship at Phoenix Raceway in Avondale, Arizona. The race will start at 3 p.m. ET and air on NBC. Fans can also stream the race on Peacock.
Four drivers have qualified for the Cup Series championship: Kyle Larson, William Byron, Ryan Blaney and Christopher Bell. Of the four drivers, Larson is the only one who has won a championship before, winning it all in 2021. Byron has won the most races this season with six. Blaney is in first place in the Cup Series standings, and Bell is the only one who is competing in the Championship 4 for the second consecutive year.
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During a press conference on Saturday, Larson was asked what experiences he could draw from when he won the championship two years ago. “It’s a totally different series than it was two years ago. The cars are different. Restarts are different,” Larson said. “Just the style of racing is different. The way cars react around other cars is different. There’s not really anything I feel like I can take from a couple years ago, other than just knowing that we’ve done it before so we can do it again. But that really doesn’t mean anything either.”
Last week, PopCulture.com spoke to Bell about what he needs to do to earn a win on Sunday. “You just have to limit your mistakes and I would say no mistakes, but all four of us are going to make mistakes and probably make many of them,” Bell said. “And it’s going to be the guy who makes the least for the team, not just the driver, but the team that makes the least amount of mistakes and executes the best. That’s going to be your champion. So going into the Championship 4 race, all of us are going to have fast cars. We’re all going to be very competitive and it’s going to be about the details that separates the champion from the other three.”
Another note about Sunday’s race is it will be the final one for Kevin Harvick who is set to retire once the race ends. In his career, Harvick has won 60 Cup Series Races, won the Daytona 500 in 2007 and claimed the Cup Series title in 2014.
