Denny Hamlin and his perennial pursuit of the NASCAR Cup Series championship may be heading for the same collision course he’s grown accustomed to throughout his 20-year career.
There is still hope that Year 21 will be different. On the heels of his worst finish of The Chase so far, Hamlin still stands fourth in the points standings, just 31 points behind series leader Kyle Larson with three weeks left to surpass him for Hamlin’s first Cup Series title.
A new format for The Chase, less reliance upon a singular race to settle a title winner and factoring him in as this season’s No. 1 seed all seemed to indicate the 2026 season truly favoring Hamlin and the No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing group. But from the perspective of sheer dominance and capability, The Chase has gone anything but right for the entire team.
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Perhaps trickiest for the No. 11 team is the weight of accomplishing Hamlin’s ultimate goal of becoming a NASCAR Cup Series champion. On one hand, there is crew chief Chris Gayle, the team’s foremost leader whose emphasis on “it’s not over” following Sunday’s 28th-place result at Phoenix Raceway embodies the desperation in his goal to win a title with Hamlin, knowing that time is short with Hamlin set to retire following the 2027 season.
On the other hand, though, is Hamlin, who simply appears exhausted after 20 years of coming up short since his rookie season in 2006.
“I am mentally drained at the Cup Series,” Hamlin said in Monday’s episode of “Actions Detrimental,” his Dirty Mo Media podcast. “I have reached … my fun meter is pegged to the absolute fullest.”
Overhanging Hamlin is the burdensome shadow of his shortcomings over the decades. The common phrase goes: “Past success does not guarantee future results.” The problem is that Hamlin nearly appears as ill-fated every time The Chase rears its head — almost in the way that his past failures would guarantee future failures.
“Some things are meant to be, some things are not meant to be,” Hamlin said after Sunday’s race. “There have been so many cards that have been dealt in my career in these playoffs, Chase, that I’ve seen it all. Nothing surprises me. I’m not shell-shocked because I’ve been here.”
That is not meant to imply that Hamlin has either thrown in the towel or is suddenly hopeless in his championship pursuit. His 2026 season has been remarkably successful, collecting four wins, 16 top fives and 21 top 10s in 33 starts this season. That includes a red-hot stretch in late spring that produced a trio of consecutive wins at Nashville Superspeedway, Michigan International Speedway and Pocono Raceway that propelled him to ninth on the Cup Series’ all-time wins list with 64 victories — directly behind Dale Earnhardt (76), Jimmie Johnson (83), Cale Yarborough (83) and Darrell Waltrip (84).
This summer, there was a palpable swagger Hamlin carried into the race track on a weekly basis. He worked to erase Tyler Reddick’s 129-point lead in May and by late June took over the top spot in points, a lead he didn’t relinquish until the Bristol Night Race in mid-September. Ahead of Pocono, Hamlin admitted that portion of the season marked “the peak” of that week-to-week confidence, knowing he and his team could become dominant whenever it needed to.
Whatever swagger he and the No. 11 team had then has evaporated in The Chase. Mistakes on pit road, atop the pit box and behind the wheel have doomed Hamlin since the opening race at Darlington Raceway. There, he finished 18th, then ninth at World Wide Technology Raceway, eighth at Bristol Motor Speedway, third at Kansas Speedway, 16th at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, fifth at Charlotte Motor Speedway and 28th at Phoenix.
Hamlin’s average start (5.71) to average finish (12.43) comparison shows the greatest disparity of anyone on The Chase grid at almost a full seven positions. An argument can be made that Hamlin showed winning speed in the opening two stages of Darlington’s Southern 500, where he led 68 laps. But winning speed hasn’t come back since.
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Now over four months since his last trip to Victory Lane, the frustration is taking a toll on Hamlin.
“Monday mornings are the worst because by the time I get to sleep, it means if I’ve slept, then my mind has calmed,” Hamlin said on his podcast. “And then my first thought every Monday morning when we get the Vegases, the [Phoenixes], the Darlingtons is [expletive! Expletive, expletive, expletive]. That’s what it feels like. Every Monday morning. I just need one. I want one smooth race that no bull-[expletive] happens. That’s what I want. But you can’t will it. It just has to happen. And some things are meant to happen. Some things are not meant to happen. But at this point, I feel like the racing gods are picking on me.”
If Las Vegas was the worst of it — a decision to pit at Lap 45 allowed Kyle Larson to get back onto the lead lap, followed by Hamlin’s over-eager drive in Turn 4 that led him to spin out and damage his car — Phoenix was a close second. The good news in Arizona is that the No. 11 Toyota appeared on the verge of contention and charged to fourth place — until his right-rear tire went flat, sending him to pit road, where he then incurred a speeding penalty that kept him off the lead lap despite being the first car one lap down when a caution flag waved for a separate incident that coincided with his pit stop.
But for all the dread, all the doubt and all the “here we go again” of what could be another fruitless championship campaign for Denny Hamlin, the driver himself still carries a glimmer of optimism — even if it’s of the “fake it till you make it” ilk — trailing Larson by just 31 points heading to Talladega Superspeedway on Sunday (2 p.m. ET, NBC, HBO Max, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
“We’ve just got to get it back,” Hamlin said. “I mean, again, here we are. It could not have been worse [at Phoenix]. We still control our own destiny. We still control our own destiny.”