{"id":275971,"date":"2025-11-11T08:37:12","date_gmt":"2025-11-11T08:37:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/275971\/"},"modified":"2025-11-11T08:37:12","modified_gmt":"2025-11-11T08:37:12","slug":"denny-hamlin-makes-nascar-champion-claim-as-phoenix-dust-settles-motorsport-sports","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/275971\/","title":{"rendered":"Denny Hamlin makes NASCAR champion claim as Phoenix dust settles – Motorsport – Sports"},"content":{"rendered":"

Denny Hamlin was four laps of Phoenix Raceway from ending his 20-year wait for a NASCAR Cup Series championship when a late caution and pit road misjudgement ended it all for yet another year. But despite this, the 60-time race winner still believes he now knows what it feels like to be a champion.<\/p>\n

The 44-year-old<\/a> Joe Gibbs Racing star ended the season with a sixth-place finish in the Championship Race, two spots behind champion Kyle Larson<\/a> of Hendrick Motorsports and three points below the now two-time champion in the overall driver standings.<\/p>\n

While he opted to attend Larson\u2019s subsequent celebrations and later explained why<\/a> before having to go to the NASCAR<\/a> Awards Ceremony in Scottsdale, Arizona<\/a>, Hamlin has kept a somewhat low profile in the week since, abstaining from his usual weekly appearance on his \u2018Action\u2019s Detrimental\u2019 podcast.<\/p>\n

Accompanied by his fianc\u00e9e, Jordan Fish, and their three children, Hamlin has enjoyed the downtime with his loved ones<\/a>, spending Halloween together and even taking the opportunity to retrace his roots, returning to his home state of Virginia to visit the now-abandoned Amelia Motor Raceway<\/a>, where he used to race go karts.<\/p>\n

One particularly moving photo shared on social media showed a still intact Chesterfield Trailer & Hitch advertising board – a business run by his ailing dad, Dennis. Exactly what Dennis is dealing with, Hamlin has, understandably, opted to keep private, although he did reveal prior to the Championship Race that this would be his final opportunity to see him win a title<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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\u201cYou’ve got to just do the best you can to reset,\u201d Hamlin recently told Racing America on SI<\/a>. \u201cI’ll certainly need some time to do that. But generally speaking, this is the race hangover time. You’ve got to just take a little break, get a reset, get recharged, you know, it’s just this year will probably take a little bit longer than years past.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hamlin put everything he had into the 2025 title race, going so far as to \u201cchanging [his] approach at that racetrack\u201d for the finale, but while he wound up leading 208 laps, it simply wasn\u2019t to be.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverything was right, but it didn’t work out in the end,\u201d he conceded. \u201cIt’s one of those things, sometimes you go into Overtime, but the score wasn’t even. You were up 30 to nothing, and you lose.<\/p>\n

DON’T MISS…<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd so, it’s just, I don’t know. It took so much out of me, it drained so much out of me, time-wise. And a lot of it, too, is because we had multiple weeks to prepare. If I had gotten in after Martinsville, I wouldn’t have had all that time to spend on Phoenix, but yeah, it was tiring and grueling, which is why I feel the way I feel today.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hamlin went on to add: \u201cTo borrow from Carl Edwards, I mean, with five laps to go, I knew what it was like to be a champion. I did everything I was supposed to, and so, you know, 40 seconds or 50 seconds at the end deciding whether I win that championship or not has no bearing on my ability or what I’m capable of.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just don’t have the trophy sitting at home, but I know we were the best.\u201d<\/p>\n

A champion on paper or not, Hamlin\u2019s six-win season was still one for the history books, with his emotional victory at Las Vegas Motor Speedway marking his 60th to date, tying him with Kevin Harvick as the 10th-winningest driver of all time.<\/p>\n

Now his full attention can turn to recharging his mind and drive ahead of his 21st push for the title. All the while, he and 23XI Racing co-owner Michael Jordan are set to go to court starting December 1 as a part of their team and Front Row Motorsports\u2019 antitrust lawsuit against NASCAR<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Denny Hamlin was four laps of Phoenix Raceway from ending his 20-year wait for a NASCAR Cup Series…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":275972,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,3932,12101,2332,634,8354,43326,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-275971","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nascar","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-denny-hamlin","11":"tag-joe-gibbs-racing","12":"tag-motorsport-section","13":"tag-nascar","14":"tag-nascar-cup-series","15":"tag-phoenix-raceway","16":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275971","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=275971"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275971\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/275972"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=275971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}