{"id":456238,"date":"2026-02-05T21:17:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-05T21:17:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/456238\/"},"modified":"2026-02-05T21:17:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-05T21:17:08","slug":"chris-gayle-has-no-doubt-denny-hamlin-will-lock-in-for-2026-nascar-title-run","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/456238\/","title":{"rendered":"Chris Gayle has no doubt Denny Hamlin will lock in for 2026 NASCAR title run"},"content":{"rendered":"

Denny Hamlin<\/a> returned from a tumultuous off-season by scoring an eventful top-5 in the Cookout Clash at Bowman Gray Stadium on Wednesday night.<\/p>\n

Like much of the field, it wasn\u2019t pretty, and Hamlin survived the chaos better than his peers more than anything else, but it was a top-5. He did it in his first race this season in which he will have to start nursing a re-injured surgically repaired shoulder until the season ends in November.<\/p>\n

All things considered, it went well.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe rust was real, especially the first 160, but as it started drying out there, we started to get a lot better,\u201d Hamlin told Motorsport.com after the race. \u201cI was like a monkey fucking a football for the first part of that race in the wet, but started to get better, but it was a good warmup overall \u2013 just a decent warmup and now it\u2019s time to lock in for the season.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read Also:<\/p>\n

His crew chief, Chris Gayle, says he has complete confidence that Hamlin will be in the headspace to compete at the highest level.<\/p>\n

\u201cOh, for sure,\u201d Gayle told Motorsport.com. \u201cI think he’ll get there a hundred percent. I have the utmost faith that that’ll happen. Obviously yes, he’s had a tremendous up-and-down off-season, right? Like it’s just remarkable the things he’s had to kind of endure and go through.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo I think it’ll just take some time to get there, right? The Clash, I think for all of us, we knocked the rust off a little bit. You sit down for three months, and it\u2019s a unique format, it\u2019s hard to get fully back where you need to be in one event.\u201d<\/p>\n

The up-and-down for Hamlin is well-documented in that he suffered a gut-punch championship race at November at Phoenix, but earned a positive outcome in his lawsuit against NASCAR on behalf of 23XI Racing alongside Front Row Motorsports, but then lost his father in a house fire in December.<\/p>\n

Gayle says he\u2019s made himself available to Hamlin but also trusts him to do what he needed to do this past month.<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, I honestly, I just let him do his own thing and reach out when he needs, send a text here or there but I don\u2019t get too involved,\u201d Gayle added. \u201cI\u2019ll send a text here or there, but I don\u2019t get that involved in it. And you know, the few conversations we\u2019ve had, it\u2019s been if you need or want to talk, we can but we keep it professional.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve mostly done our own things and that\u2019s okay. Now, as we get back to the track and are going through some things, that might change a little bit, but I let him handle his own things and he\u2019s mature enough to handle it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read Also:<\/p>\n

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– The Motorsport.com Team<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Denny Hamlin returned from a tumultuous off-season by scoring an eventful top-5 in the Cookout Clash at Bowman…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":456239,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[98680,49,48,187113,167831,3932,12101,634,3628,82],"class_list":["post-456238","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nascar","tag-bowman-gray-stadium","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-chris-gayle-has-no-doubt-denny-hamlin-will-lock-in-for-2026-nascar-title-run","tag-cook-out-clash-at-bowman-gray","tag-denny-hamlin","tag-joe-gibbs-racing","tag-nascar","tag-nascar-cup","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456238","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=456238"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456238\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/456239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=456238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=456238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=456238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}