This could finally be the week Denny Hamlin sheds one of NASCAR’s most conflicted labels: The best driver to never win a championship.
When it comes to Hamlin’s career as a whole, the driver has nothing to mope about. He has 60 career Cup Series wins, tied for 10th on the all-time list, and three Daytona 500 titles. Hamlin has the credentials of a no-doubt, first-ballot Hall of Famer.
Yet there’s a big fat zero in the championships column, which has always haunted him. Now, at age 44, the oldest full-time driver in the Cup Series field has another chance to call himself a champion — if he can outperform three other contenders in Sunday’s season finale at Phoenix Raceway.
“I’m not going to kid myself or downplay that this is a great opportunity,” Hamlin said slowly, drawing out his words before cracking a smile and adding: “But have I mentioned this is one race?”
More than any other driver, Hamlin has emphasized that indeed, anything can happen when the championship comes down to one race in NASCAR’s unique and controversial playoff system. The format is almost certainly in its final season, partially for that reason, with the sport’s power players leaning toward a championship determined by a larger sample size than just a single event.
But this is still the system for now, and Hamlin could conceivably win the title just days before his 45th birthday — an age when many of his modern contemporaries have retired.
That’s not the only reason a Hamlin championship in this season, of all years, would be one of the unlikeliest times for him to win it.
For one thing, Hamlin was suddenly placed with a new crew chief, the unproven Chris Gayle, as former crew chief Chris Gabehart was moved to the competition director role at Joe Gibbs Racing following the conclusion of the 2024 season.
Hamlin also began this year with a mostly bare team transporter, an indicator of sponsorship woes after longtime primary sponsor FedEx departed. That was a real worry heading into contract negotiations between Hamlin and JGR, since sponsorship woes previously forced the team to part ways with another future Hall of Famer, Kyle Busch.
Oh, and there’s the matter of Hamlin and NBA legend Michael Jordan, who co-own the 23XI Racing team, suing NASCAR over antitrust violations — a case which had Hamlin spend three days in federal court just last week.
Denny Hamlin’s win in Las Vegas earlier this month clinched his spot in the Championship 4. This will be Hamlin’s 10th finish in the top five, but so far, he’s never won the Cup Series title. (Logan Riely / Getty Images)
Yet here is Hamlin, as competitive as ever. How has he been able to do it? By following the familiar recipe that includes Hamlin’s special ingredient: His ability to adapt to his situation and surroundings at all times.
Hamlin is NASCAR’s chameleon, constantly changing his colors in order to fit in with whatever the moment requires.
“It’s why I welcome change,” he said. “I always want change. Do not let it sit and get too stagnant, because everyone is going to catch up eventually to whatever I feel like my edge is. I absolutely love change.”
Hamlin has raced in four different generations of Cup Series cars, reshaping his driving style each time. He believes his unusually high number of Hall of Fame-caliber teammates — from Busch and Martin Truex Jr. to Matt Kenseth, Tony Stewart and Carl Edwards — each showed him a piece of what makes up the ideal driver.
So he decided to take aspects of each of their strengths and mash it into his own style, like a golfer rebuilding their swing.
But his adaptability showed itself long before that. As a kid, when he graduated to a faster and more challenging go-kart, he immediately jumped in and started ripping off wins. As a Cup Series rookie, he swept the unusually shaped, triangular Pocono Raceway in 2006 — and “somehow adapted quicker than some of the drivers that have been racing there for decades,” he said.
“I just do my best to figure out how to make speed out of whatever the change is,” Hamlin said. “If it’s a new tire? All right, educate me. Give me all the information you can. If (the tire) wants this, then I need to approach the corner like that.
“When it’s a new car? All right, the Next Gen (car) has got more drag, less downforce, more grip. How do I need to approach racing tracks now with this kind of car?”
Hamlin also had to adapt to what modern racing requires, which includes more studying. He ramped up his work ethic and notably spent 7.5 hours in the simulator before Las Vegas, then won that race.
Even his weekly podcast, “Actions Detrimental,” was created largely in response to the dire sponsorship climate — to help build his brand and become more appealing to potential backers. Now his car is trending toward being fully sold out for next season, with new sponsors like Progressive Insurance coming on board.
Seeing Hamlin in this position now seems like quite the turnaround from how the year was shaping up to unfold originally. He was paired with Gayle, who, despite crew chiefing at the Cup Series level for six full seasons prior to joining with Hamlin, had just two career Cup wins and had never made it past the first round of the playoffs.
Hamlin didn’t exactly sound optimistic prior to the season, both by making it known he was upset about the Gabehart move and giving only a meager vote of confidence publicly for Gayle.
“If this is honesty hour, (the hesitation) was because he was unproven,” Hamlin said. “When I’m in a JGR competition meeting, I always listen to the driver and the crew chief of whoever ran well that weekend, and they were never one of the top couple. So I never got to know him much, because I never really heard much from him.”
But Gayle, a NASCAR veteran with 37 career Xfinity Series wins — including 20 with Kyle Busch — never took the lack of faith personally. He figured Hamlin simply didn’t have enough information to know if Gayle was the man for the job or not, similar to the 24-hour period when Hamlin had to decide whether to accept Gayle as his crew chief (Gayle planned to leave the organization for another team if Hamlin said no).
“I don’t hold any bad blood for that. That’s an honest evaluation on his part,” Gayle said of Hamlin’s lack of initial enthusiasm over the hire.
And Hamlin didn’t mean it to be personal. Though he tried to keep an open mind, the driver now acknowledges he was “scared of the change.”
Crew chief Chris Gayle (left) and Denny Hamlin celebrate the Las Vegas win, their sixth as a team this season. Hamlin initially was wary of the abrupt change away from Chris Gabehart. (Logan Riely / Getty Images)
When The Athletic interviewed Hamlin before the season, with only one practice session under his belt, Hamlin seized upon the fact his car began the day off the pace and Gayle made adjustments to improve the speed.
“I was looking for any glimmer of hope,” Hamlin said now, looking back. “We rolled in with no sponsors, new crew chief, all that. I was looking for anything that was positive at that point.”
In reality, he acknowledged, “I was probably more pessimistic.” But it didn’t take Hamlin long to become fully convinced.
In late March, when the changes Gayle made for Hamlin’s car got the driver back to victory lane at Martinsville for the first time since 2015, Hamlin quickly realized Gayle was perfectly capable of giving him what he needed to win races — and maybe the championship.
“I realized with the right people around him and when he gets the information he’s seeking, he can do great things with a car,” Hamlin said. “I don’t think he ever doubted any of the other drivers he worked with, but he probably needed to lead them down a path (for a setup) — whereas I can lead him down a path. That’s a lot different of a dynamic.”
Their success has helped soothe the feelings surrounding Gabehart’s promotion, which blindsided Hamlin. Even though Gayle and Hamlin have better numbers in several categories than last year’s No. 11 team with Gabehart, Hamlin said he still doesn’t know how he would have done had the pairing been able to stick together.
“(Hamlin and Gayle) have won six races this year; would we have won three (with Gabehart)? Would we have won 10?” he said. “I know every little bit of all the facts, and I have no idea, truthfully.
“But I know that all of our cars are winning more races and I’m having as successful of a year as I have in the last three or four.”
Indeed, Gabehart’s leadership at JGR has led the team to two in the Championship 4 — only the second time an organization has done that — and 13 victories this season.
And Hamlin didn’t doubt Gabehart would achieve that success; it’s just that “selfishly, I didn’t want that.”
“Why are you going to break up one of the most successful combinations to do that?” Hamlin said. “I understand because it was the right thing for the organization, but it doesn’t mean I have to be happy with it.”
Team owner Joe Gibbs understands, but he also banked on Hamlin realizing that what could be good for the organization as a whole meant Hamlin’s own cars could also improve. And ultimately, that seems to have been the case.
“It wasn’t easy, I’ll put it that way,” Gibbs said. “But I couldn’t be more pleased with what’s happened.”
Now the team has Hamlin potentially on the doorstep of his first career title, 312 miles away from finally being able to silence the detractors who poke at the giant hole on his resume.
But Hamlin knows even if everything lines up exactly right and he does his job to perfection, there’s always the piano-falling-from-the-sky-moment that could ruin his hopes.
“Truthfully, in the bucket of luck, my (career) luck in the playoffs has been freaking horrible,” he said. “I only need it to be good for one more week. That’s it. Just hang on for one more week.”