Denny Hamlin, who was pipped to the NASCAR championship in thrilling fashion, has taken aim at some of his Cup Series competitors who are not best pleased with the new playoff format
14:12 ET, 19 Nov 2025Updated 14:12 ET, 19 Nov 2025
Denny Hamlin(Image: Sean Gardner, Getty Images)
Still coming to terms with the NASCAR Cup Series championship slipping through his fingers at Phoenix Raceway, Joe Gibbs Racing’s Denny Hamlin has revealed that upcoming changes to the Playoff format are a significant factor in his decision to return for another season.
The 44-year-old driver, who secured a series-leading six victories in 2025 including the 60th win of his career, matching Kevin Harvick for 10th place on the all-time list, acknowledged on his ‘Action’s Detrimental’ podcast that facing the current winner-takes-all format again next year would have made his return “very” challenging.
This admission follows Hamlin‘s dominant performance at Phoenix, where he led 208 laps before a late caution with four laps remaining triggered chaos on pit road. The resulting mixed tire strategies pushed him behind eventual champion Kyle Larson of Hendrick Motorsports.
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2025 represented Hamlin’s 20th shot at capturing his first championship, and the second occasion he has ended the season as runner-up.
“It doesn’t make me want to race right now in this moment, anymore. They could say 36 races, which they’re not, everyone just get over it. You’re going to get Playoffs,” Hamlin confessed about the existing 10-race, four-round Playoff structure.
“But the offseason is still so fresh, I want nothing to do with racing still, right now.”
NASCAR is gearing up for a format change this offseason, but the specifics are still under wraps. What we do know is that it will remain a 10-race series, which Denny Hamlin finds “more appealing”.
Denny Hamlin was left devastated after the Championship race
“For people like myself, William Byron, Kyle Larson, Ryan Blaney, Tyler Reddick, I think we’re all for a bigger sample size,” he stated. “I think if I didn’t list your name, of course you love the one race playoff because it rewards mediocrity for the bulk of the season and it allows you to just, you’ve never had one ripped out of your hands. You’ve taken out of people’s hands, but you’ve never had it ripped out.
“So you don’t know what that feels like, you don’t know what it feels like to dominate a season and then all of a sudden a format or whatever keeps resetting the score on you, and then finally you end up losing in overtime. Those are the people that are really, really excited about the one race and that we had it. It’s because they were able to steal from others.”
Hamlin further expressed his belief that “mediocre people want the smallest sample size as possible,” and that “I think that the greats, they want it to give a bigger sample size.”
The 23XI Racing team co-owner, who shares ownership with Michael Jordan, also noted that those favoring a larger “sample size” weren’t just the names he mentioned.
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“There might be others by the way, I want to be careful with saying just those names. There are others that do perform well over a large bucket of time, but those are the ones I thought about this year that were top five, like Chase Elliott,” Hamlin said.
“I left Chase Elliott out. I shouldn’t have left Chase out…He is one of the best at grinding through the season. And while he might not be great, he finds a way to be there week after week after week, which is why he’s always a perennial guy inside the top five in total points.”
One potential format NASCAR could introduce is the “3-3-4” structure, which Elliott believed “would be better than what we have.”
But it remains unclear if this view is shared by NASCAR officials, with less than three months remaining before the non-points-scoring season opener, the Cook Out Clash at Bowman Gray Stadium.