The NASCAR Cup Series rolls into Texas Motor Speedway on Sunday for the Wurth 400, a 400-mile clash on one of the schedule's most distinctive 1.5-mile ovals. The race goes green at 3:43 p.m. Eastern, with FOX Sports 1 and Amazon Prime Video carrying coverage, and pre-race form makes this one of the most balanced top-of-card battles of the spring stretch.
Kyle Larson is the headline pick across both the Yahoo Sports and Las Vegas oddsmaking circles. The defending Cup Series champion has built a Texas record few of his contemporaries can match — three pole positions at the venue since 2021 and a fourth-place finish in last year's edition of the Wurth 400. He has also led at least 75 laps in four of his last six starts at the track. Larson goes off at +550, narrowly behind Denny Hamlin (+500), with Tyler Reddick rounding out the top tier.
Reddick has been the standout performer of the 2026 Cup season so far, winning five of the first ten races and locking down a third pole of the year at Kansas a fortnight ago. Texas should suit his repertoire — he ranks fifth in track-type total speed for high-speed 1.5-mile ovals and carries a 7.0 average finish at those layouts in 2026, including four straight Texas starts in which he has led laps.
The track itself remains an outlier on the calendar. Engineers have long pointed to Turns 1 and 2 having a fundamentally different geometry from Turns 3 and 4 — a quirk dating back to the 2017 reconfiguration that has never quite settled. The result is a layout that produces more cautions per race than any other active venue in the NextGen era, while rewarding drivers who commit on the throttle into the higher banking.
Recent history points firmly toward Hendrick Motorsports. The four-car squad has won three of the last five Cup races at Texas, and Larson's average running position is comfortably the best of the field. Chase Elliott and William Byron will both be threats to keep the streak intact.
The deepest sleeper pick across the predictions market is Chase Briscoe. The No. 19 Joe Gibbs Racing entrant has three previous top-five finishes at Texas and was running inside the top ten last year before suspension trouble dropped him to 27th. Yahoo Sports' projection model has Briscoe winning Sunday outright, with Christopher Bell predicted to take Stage 2 and Austin Cindric Stage 1.
Bell, currently ninth in the championship standings, arrives at Texas needing to halt a worrying slide. He has finished 17th or worse in three consecutive races and the math on his title contention is starting to tighten if he cannot convert one of the May races into a meaningful points haul. Erik Jones is a quieter figure to watch, with the projections showing him as a top-ten candidate after consecutive 23rd-place results.
Larson himself, speaking earlier in the spring stretch, framed his recent approach simply.
"We just had to be smart about it and slowly pick our way to the front," he said. "It's fun to get out there and race and mix it up with them."
That blend of patience and aggression has been the cornerstone of the 2025 champion's career, and it remains the template for getting a 1.5-mile race like Texas right. Larson lost the season opener at Daytona, missed in Las Vegas and runners-upped at Kansas — but the Texas weekend looks like a credible reset point.
For the wider championship picture, Sunday is also another datapoint in the developing 23XI Racing-versus-Hendrick narrative. Reddick's win haul has put 23XI ahead in the points race, but Hendrick's track-specific edge at Texas could narrow the gap before the schedule pivots toward the All-Star race and the Coke 600.
Lights out at 3:43 p.m. ET on Sunday.
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*Originally published on [Motorsports Global](https://motorsports.global/article/wurth-400-texas-2026-preview-larson-reddick-hamlin-hendrick-tyre). Visit for full coverage.*
