Denny stumbled at Darlington — but don’t write him off yet

Everything was set up for Denny Hamlin to succeed going into the 2026 NASCAR Cup Series Chase presented by Mobil 1 ... until The Chase actually started, that is. Two-thirds of the way through Sunday’s Chase opener at Darlington Raceway, Hamlin was running at the edge of the top 15 when Michael McDowell bumped him into the wall and damaged his toe links, noticeably affecting the No. 11 car’s performance the rest of the night. It ended up transforming a race where Hamlin led nearly 20% of all laps (and had an average running position of 9.01) and reducing it to an 18th-place finish, worse than 12 of his 15 fellow Chase drivers. With just a single Chase result in the books, Hamlin’s points lead shrunk from 25 over second place (and 50 over sixth place) to just 12 over second-ranked teammate Christopher Bell (and 39 over sixth-ranked teammate Ty Gibbs). It also immediately put a real dent in Denny’s odds to finally win his first career Cup championship. But how down should Hamlin be feeling after Darlington? Did the mid-race scuff-up really ruin his title hopes before they barely even began? And is this just par for the course for a driver whose career has been littered with missed opportunities to win the title that every other name around him on the career wins list already has? Certainly, Hamlin’s unfortunate incident Sunday was the latest in a long line of moments that make one wonder what it is about the No. 11 and the postseason, whether in The Chase (old or new) or the playoffs. But is the perception of Hamlin’s proneness to mishaps at this phase of the season fair? In years where he made the playoffs/Chase during his career, Hamlin has an average Driver Rating of 95.8 in the regular season, versus 96.2 in the postseason. That’s obviously not a huge difference at all. However, if we adjust for his predicted performance -- based on track type, recent history, team performance and affinity for each particular track -- that regular-season figure is 0.8 higher than expected, while the postseason number is 1.5 lower than expected, meaning Hamlin does slightly worse relative to expectations in the crucible of the late-season stretch run for the championship.

The same goes for when we dig into specific sub-groups of postseason races. Hamlin’s performance in postseason openers, like Darlington, falls by 2.4 points of Driver Rating relative to pre-race expectations, and his performances at elimination races under the old playoff system dipped by 0.9 points versus expectations. In other words, there is some truth to the reputation that Hamlin can’t get out of his own way in important moments along the path to that elusive championship. That being said, even a Driver Rating that runs 1.5 points below expectations is pretty solid when you’re as good as Hamlin is at baseline. That 96.2 postseason rating from before still ranks 10th-best among qualified Cup drivers in years they competed for the championship, sandwiched between Martin Truex Jr./Christopher Bell and William Byron/Ryan Blaney. None is near the level of notable clutch maestro Jimmie Johnson at 104.9, of course, but that’s why J.J. has those seven trophies and Denny has zero (for now). The good news for Hamlin in that department is that, while the difficult run Sunday absolutely hurt his odds to win the 2026 title, he still can make a strong case as the championship favorite from here. For one thing, he is still The Chase points leader. While his edge on the rest of the field got sliced roughly in half with just one off-night, Hamlin’s 12-point margin over No. 2 Bell is actually the third-widest gap between any two spots on The Chase leaderboard -- trailing only No. 7 Kyle Larson’s margin to No. 8 Joey Logano (23 points) and No. 4 Tyler Reddick’s margin to No. 5 Chase Briscoe (13 points).

The other thing Hamlin has on his side continues to be superior track fit compared with the rest of The Chase field ... though that factor is waning some. As we pointed out last week, the remaining tracks on the 2026 schedule are disproportionately good venues for Denny, matching his strengths -- many intermediates and flat tracks -- and minimizing his weaknesses -- zero road courses and only one superspeedway. That meant he had the best “home-field advantage” of any Chase driver, in terms of how much better he projected to be in the postseason than at a generic, average Cup site from the full-season schedule. And that’s still true after Sunday:

It is less true now, though: His gap in “home-field” over the rest of The Chase is nowhere near as much of an outlier as it was going in, another illustration of what a missed opportunity his miscue at Darlington represented. And now comes the opportunity for Denny to rebuild the edge he held just a week ago. Gateway is a very good track for Hamlin -- in addition to chief rivals Blaney and Bell -- which means the pressure is on to break his trend of undershooting expectations at this exact type of race. At the same time, though, we have to resist the urge to overreact to one mediocre finish that didn’t even knock Denny out of first place in the standings. The true test of Hamlin’s title bona fides was always going to come in a few more weeks, during the Kansas-Las Vegas-Charlotte intermediate block of the schedule. But he does have to avoid more runs like Sunday’s in order to make those opportunities on the 1.5-mile ovals really count toward his first-ever championship bid.