In the end, arguably the four biggest storylines of the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series season all converged in a single moment.
The No. 1 story of the year was the ongoing antitrust lawsuit against NASCAR brought by 23XI Racing and Front Row Motorsports. The No. 2 story was the ongoing discussion and debate over the NASCAR playoff format and its future. The No. 3 story was perhaps Denny Hamlin’s quest for his long-awaited first Cup Series title at age 44. And in another consistent theme, the No. 4 story was the gains Goodyear has made in softening the tire to improve the racing with NASCAR’s stubborn Next Gen car.
With that in mind, consider the end of the season finale at Phoenix Raceway. With three laps to go, a tire went flat as the result of a team pushing it too far (Story No. 4), which erased the championship lead of the person related to Stories No. 1 and 3, then highlighted Story No. 2 in one of the most glaring ways possible.
Hamlin’s head must still be swirling with how it all unfolded. On his “Actions Detrimental” podcast, he has often used his platform to advocate for a different playoff format and loudly pushed Goodyear to develop tires that wear more. Then, in the final edition of the one-race championship, all four title contenders’ teams got ultra aggressive on their setups and air pressures, leading to at least one tire failure for each of them.
The last one, from William Byron, caused a caution that ruined Hamlin’s championship and instead opened the door for Kyle Larson — who had two flat tires during the race — to take a strategy gamble and win the championship instead in an out-of-nowhere comeback.
That only intensified the playoff conversation, which will come to a head sometime during this offseason when NASCAR announces the new format. The other storylines will also carry on, as the antitrust lawsuit is scheduled to begin Dec. 1 — unless both sides settle in the next few weeks — and Goodyear has already started testing tires for next year’s campaign (with more tests on the books before the 2026 season takes the green flag in February).
And then there’s Hamlin, who has suddenly become a sympathetic figure for many in the fan base — but still needs to make the final determination on whether he returns for another season. If he returns, he will be the most prominent character again.
Rarely is the outcome of a season so connected to each of the major storylines, but it almost felt poetic in this case. Whether that poem was an epic tragedy or a triumph remains open to interpretation.
Hamlin’s heartbreak
As of this writing early Monday morning, Hamlin has yet to record the post-Phoenix edition of his podcast. Though he put on a brave face to power through the awards ceremony on Tuesday, even lingering for much of the industry after-party with his fiancée and oldest daughter, Hamlin made it clear he still needed time to process the fallout from the season finale.
This type of pain is something only a select few drivers can understand. It’s a small and unenviable club of competitors who saw their worthy championship hopes slip from within their grasp in the final race — or, even worse, the final laps.
Carl Edwards is perhaps the flagship member of this club, and it drove him to an early retirement after his crushing 2016 defeat — which was set up in part by a phantom debris caution while he was cruising to the win.
In Edwards’ Hall of Fame speech this year, he noted that even though he lost the title that night at Homestead-Miami Speedway, it was one of the best races he’d ever run and said, “I knew with about 20 laps to go in that race what it felt like to have a championship team and run a championship race.”
Denny Hamlin lost his lead — and eventually, his long-awaited title — after a late caution in the championship race. (James Gilbert / Getty Images)
Hamlin cited Edwards’ comments in his pre-awards interview Tuesday, saying he could relate to what Edwards meant. And in that same conversation, Hamlin said while he planned to race in 2026, he would “need some time” to think it through before deciding whether to continue his career.
“At this point, there’s just absolutely no way that I would even — I don’t even think about race cars right now,” Hamlin said.
Having covered the moments after Edwards’ defeat straight through to his retirement months later, there are some undeniable parallels here. We don’t know the depths of how much this has impacted Hamlin, and it’s not impossible he could decide to stop racing now.
But there’s one massive difference that could keep Hamlin around: The championship format is changing. If NASCAR was continuing with the one-race championship next season, it would be much easier to picture Hamlin walking away after doing everything he was asked to do in this format and still coming up short.
The increased sample size of races to decide the championship — whether that’s four, 10 or 36 — will give him a much better chance of controlling his own fate. And that might be enough to lure him back after he gets some distance from Phoenix.
Larson most popular?
There seem to be two groups of people in NASCAR fandom: Chase Elliott fans, and those who can’t fathom how the dry, low-key Elliott keeps winning NASCAR’s Most Popular Driver Award.
Elliott made it eight in a row last week, now such a foregone conclusion that he need not show up for the awards ceremony to accept the honor (he posted a video acceptance speech on social media shortly after the award was announced).
But one star driver with a sizable fan base is now speaking out about how much he wants to win the award. During his championship media tour, Larson appeared on Barstool Sports’ Rubbin’ is Racing podcast and spoke about the Most Popular Driver Award with a genuine earnestness.
“It would mean so much,” Larson said. “It’s weird saying that because it’s such an awkward thing, but I would love to win the Most Popular Driver Award some day.
“It feels so far out from me winning — or anybody winning it (but Elliott) — that if I won it, I would be like ‘Holy s—, that’s incredible.’ It would be such a good feeling.”
Larson said he felt his fan base was “every bit as large as his — or bigger,” but figured maybe Elliott’s fans just vote more.
He may be right; at the halfway point of this year, SportsBusiness Journal reported Larson was leading Elliott in merchandise sales after Larson finished second to Elliott in both 2024 and 2023.
Kyle Larson won his second Cup Series championship. (Chris Graythen / Getty Images)
Highs and lows
Here’s a look at Cup Series drivers who had a career high or career low in some of the major statistical categories in 2025 (minimum three seasons run):
• Chase Briscoe: Career high in all six major categories — wins (three), top-fives (15), top-10s (19), laps led (884), poles (seven) and average finish (12.7). Briscoe absolutely throttled his previous career marks in his first year at Joe Gibbs Racing, surpassing his entire previous career totals for his four combined seasons in wins (previously two), top-fives (13), laps led (525) and poles (two). Just an astounding breakout year.
• William Byron: Career high in laps led (1,330). Byron’s Martinsville performance moved him past Larson to pace the series in laps led for the first time in his career.
• Christopher Bell: Career high in wins (four) and average finish (11.2). Bell led the series in average finish and was tied with Larson for the most top-10s, but was shut out from the Championship 4 for the second consecutive season.
• Ryan Blaney: Career high in wins (four), top-fives (15) and laps led (852). The unheralded Phoenix win set his new career best for victories in a season, and Blaney had three more top-five finishes than his previous career high. If only he’d won Martinsville …
• Bubba Wallace: New career high in laps led (376) and tied career bests in top-fives and top-10s (same totals as last year). Wallace had more speed than last season, but his career-worst nine DNFs tanked his average finish by more than three spots compared to 2024.
• Alex Bowman: Career-low average finish, with an asterisk — that being his career at Hendrick Motorsports (not counting his backmarker days). Bowman’s 17.4 average finish underscored the team’s inconsistency because he was also one top-10 away from tying his career high (he had 16, tied for seventh in the series).
With raised expectations after joining Joe Gibbs Racing, Chase Briscoe had easily his best Cup season in 2025. (James Gilbert / Getty Images)
• Austin Cindric: Career high in laps led (325) but tied a career low with a meager five top-10 finishes. That’s a pretty ugly number for a Team Penske car and tied him for 25th in the series with Austin Dillon, Erik Jones, Todd Gilliland and Zane Smith.
• Ryan Preece: Career highs in top-fives (three), top-10s (14) and average finish (15.7). Preece was one of the underrated breakout drivers of the season, as his top-five and top-10 totals nearly matched his career totals from his first five Cup seasons combined (four and 16, respectively).
• Kyle Busch: Career low in top-fives (three) and laps led (88) and tied career low in top-10s (10). Just an unthinkably putrid season for one of the all-time great NASCAR drivers. This is a guy who has led more than 1,000 laps in 10 different seasons and couldn’t even hit 100 this year. Busch once had 22 top-fives in a single year — 22! — but managed to finish no better than fifth all year in 2025 (the season finale at Phoenix, plus the Austin and Chicago road courses).
• Michael McDowell: Career high in top-fives (three). It was a disappointing season for McDowell in his first campaign with Spire Motorsports, but he did manage to finish in the top five more than he had in his previous 12 seasons.
• John Hunter Nemechek: Career highs in top-fives (two), top-10s (eight), laps led (37), average finish (20.3). In a quietly solid season for Legacy Motor Club, Nemechek got the first two top-fives of his career, surpassed his previous combined career total in top-10s (seven in two seasons) and improved upon his best average finish by more than two spots.
• Todd Gilliland: Career highs in top-10s (five) and average finish (20.8). It felt like Gilliland slipped a bit this year since he was five spots lower in the points than last season, but he eked out new previous career highs in two categories (previously four top-10s and a 20.9 average finish).
The podium races
This season lacked an epic standout race we’ll remember for years to come, but the June race at Michigan International Raceway — a fuel mileage finish won by Hamlin — received the highest percentage of “Yes” votes in my “Was it a good race?” poll this season.
Michigan got 92.2 percent in the poll, joined on the podium of best races by the playoff event at Kansas Speedway (90.7 percent) — which Chase Elliott stole in double overtime after the Toyotas ahead of him raced each other too hard — and the summer thriller at Atlanta Motor Speedway (90.5 percent), in which Elliott passed Brad Keselowski on the final lap.
As for the worst race of the season? That would be the spring Bristol race (20.1 percent), which had teased extreme tire wear only to turn into a complete domination by Larson, who led 411 of 500 laps. The podium of shame was rounded out by Watkins Glen (28.1 percent), an uneventful Shane van Gisbergen thumping, and spring Talladega (39 percent), a mostly drama-free race that went green to the finish in an Austin Cindric victory.
Overall, this season’s polling average was 66.7 percent, which ranks No. 6 of the 10 years in the poll’s existence (but the lowest of the four Next Gen seasons so far).