KANSAS CITY, Kan. -- Martin Truex Jr. won for the seventh time this season when he took the checkered flag Sunday at Kansas Speedway.
The championship now goes through him.
And it has nothing to do with him winning for the seventh time.
Kyle Larson, who led 132 laps last year on his way to finishing second at Homestead-Miami Speedway, is out of the playoffs after an engine failure dropped him to ninth in the standings and out of the championship picture.
No offense to Truex, but unless a test session this Wednesday and Thursday at Homestead-Miami Speedway showed something different, Larson would have been as much of a favorite to win this year's championship, which is slated for Sunday, Nov. 19, at Homestead.
"He's the best car at Homestead," Kevin Harvick said of Larson. "He's the guy that does that [track] best. You eliminated the best car at Homestead today.
"That's a big deal for everybody."
Harvick wasn't alone in his assessment. The teams that are the favorites to make it to Homestead now feel better about their chances if they can be among the four finalists.
"Kyle Larson was going to be the car to beat and still will be the car to beat at Homestead," said Kyle Busch crew chief Adam Stevens, referring to the fact that Larson will still race at Homestead (along with all 40 cars) but will be out of the playoff picture. "Now that he's not in the mix anymore, it probably opens it up for the rest of us.
"He's hard to handle at those tracks where you're rim-riding [the wall]."
Truex and his Furniture Row Racing team didn't want to talk much about championship-favorite status, even though they have a 27-point lead on second place and a 52-point lead on the current cutoff heading into the semifinal round of eight.
They just want to plug along and continue to win races.
"I don't know if [Larson] would have been the best," Furniture Row Racing general manager Joe Garone said. "I could see why [others] think he might be. He is really talented there. I know we struggled there in the past.
"I wish he could have made it. I hope we make it so we could have proven that out. Didn't happen. We'll look forward to continuing trying to get there and get it done."
Larson's day ended after just 73 laps when his engine blew, resulting in a 39th-place finish and a 29-point cushion being wiped away. He was the only real championship contender eliminated as Matt Kenseth, Jamie McMurray and Ricky Stenhouse Jr. had not led enough laps all season to be considered a serious threat.
Even though Larson had 24 "playoff points" entering this three-race round, they weren't enough for him to overcome finishes of 10th, 13th and 39th in the round.
"It just shows you everybody makes a big deal out of the bonus points, but nothing is sacred by any means," said Truex crew chief Cole Pearn. "You can have a little bit of trouble, especially like they had, blowing up before the end of the first stage. You walk away with basically nothing."
If anything, the race Sunday showed the importance of taking care of destiny early in the round. A win automatically advances a playoff driver to the next three-race round, and Truex won the quarterfinal round opener two weeks earlier at Charlotte.
That allowed his team to not feel pressure at Kansas. And that was a good thing on a day when the team mourned the loss of fabricator Jim Watson, who died after a team go-kart outing Saturday night, reportedly of a heart attack.
The loss of Watson immediately impacted the team. Two hours before the race, at the meeting for drivers and crew chiefs, NASCAR gave new instructions for how to handle restarts. Pearn and Truex said that because they were thinking about Watson they remembered nothing about the explanation, which included some new rules for the race at Kansas, including how to handle restarts.
NASCAR Cup Series director Richard Buck told the teams that the front row must set the lane on the restart and stay above the inside white line before the start-finish line. The directive to stay above the white line at a track was new, and although it wasn't emphasized as something new, it was clearly mentioned in the meeting.
"We got called on a restart violation because I wasn't paying attention in the drivers meeting, I guess," Pearn said. "I guess they talked about it. Martin and I were talking about what happened last night. I flat just wasn't paying attention."
Truex overcame that miscue -- he had to do a pass-through on pit road under green -- and another unscheduled trip down pit road for a loose wheel. He led the final 57 laps on the way to the win.
"[That call] doesn't make sense to me," Truex said. I don't make the rules. I don't call them. ... I guess if they said it in the drivers meeting, I need to pay better attention."
Having a fast car still is better than paying attention in the drivers meeting. While surprised by the ruling, Truex did what he typically does -- try to bulldoze his way to the front.
He continued to have a dream season. And while his general manager might wish that Larson had advanced so they could have gone head-to-head at Homestead, Truex's championship run saw a competitor pull a hamstring midway through.
"I'll tell you what's shocking, that the 42 car [of Larson] lost an engine," Truex said. "That's very shocking."
It was shocking to him but not necessarily to Larson. He saw it happen to Truex last year in the same round, and it was Larson's turn to take a blow.
"At least in the new playoff format era, not always does the best team win," Larson said. "Not saying we're the best team, but we've been one of the contenders all season long.
"It's a long, 10-race playoff season. Anything can happen."