{"id":27377,"date":"2025-07-22T00:43:07","date_gmt":"2025-07-22T00:43:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/27377\/"},"modified":"2025-07-22T00:43:07","modified_gmt":"2025-07-22T00:43:07","slug":"denny-hamlin-continues-climb-in-nascars-career-wins-list-with-60-in-sight-how-far-can-he-go","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/27377\/","title":{"rendered":"Denny Hamlin continues climb in NASCAR\u2019s career wins list. With 60 in sight, how far can he go?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Denny Hamlin, still driving the No. 11 Toyota for Joe Gibbs Racing as he\u2019s done since his rookie season in 2006, is motivated to reach the top 10 this season over the final 15 races of the Cup season.<\/p>\n


\n Denny Hamlin celebrates in Victory Lane after winning a NASCAR Cup Series auto race at Dover Motor Speedway, Sunday, July 20, 2025, in Dover, Del. (AP Photo\/Derik Hamilton)(AP\/Derik Hamilton)<\/p>\n


\n Denny Hamlin celebrates in Victory Lane after winning a NASCAR Cup Series auto race at Dover Motor Speedway, Sunday, July 20, 2025, in Dover, Del. (AP Photo\/Derik Hamilton)(AP\/Derik Hamilton)<\/p>\n

DOVER, Del. (AP) \u2014 Denny Hamlin has stood his ground that wins \u2014 enough of them to soon earn his place inside NASCAR\u2019s career top-10 list \u2014 matter more to his legacy than a championship<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Easy to say, of course, with 58 race victories to zero titles.<\/p>\n

The 44-year-old Hamlin, still driving the No. 11 Toyota for Joe Gibbs Racing as he\u2019s done since his rookie season in 2006, is motivated to reach the top 10 this season over the final 15 races of the Cup season. Kevin Harvick is 10th on the career list with 60 and Kyle Busch, still active with Richard Childress Racing, is ninth with 63, giving Hamlin realistic numbers to shoot for the rest of the season.<\/p>\n

Best to take advantage at tracks where he\u2019s had success, such as Dover Motor Speedway, where he won Sunday<\/a> for the second straight year and third time overall, compared with a track like this weekend\u2019s race on the Indianapolis oval, where Hamlin is 0 for 16.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever wanted to go back to back so bad,\u201d Hamlin said of Dover. \u201c(Indy\u2019s) a track that I\u2019ve just come so fricking close to winning. I just want to cross off all the major racetracks on our schedule.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hamlin is a driver who thrives in the chaos like few others \u2014 if any can \u2014 in the series. His win at Dover came days after the race team he owns with Michael Jordan suffered a setback in its court fight with NASCAR<\/a>. He insisted ahead of the race that the legal issues never caused a distraction for him in the race car, then proved it on the mile concrete track with a series-best fourth win of the season.<\/p>\n

Maybe more dark clouds \u2014 like the ones that opened up Sunday, causing a rain delay just laps ahead of the scheduled finish \u2014 can fuel Hamlin at Indy.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll I can hope is that something happens this week that derails everything and then I\u2019ll do better,\u201d Hamlin said.<\/p>\n

Hamlin then turned to a NASCAR employee and cracked, \u201cMaybe it\u2019ll come from them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Can Hamlin realistically get to 60 in 2025? He won eight times in 2010, six times in 2019 and seven in 2020, all totals that would get him to 60 this year.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you get him in a situation where he\u2019s got the ball in his hands and it\u2019s time to go win the race, he finds a way to do that most times,\u201d crew chief Chris Gayle said.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a fitting analogy for a race team owned by a former NFL coach.<\/p>\n

At his pace, Hamlin remains a contender to cash in this November at Phoenix Raceway<\/a> and win his first NASCAR championship \u2014 even if he lost out on the $1 million prize in the series\u2019 first In-season challenge.<\/p>\n

$1 million is on the line<\/p>\n

The idea for the challenge was largely championed by Hamlin, a three-time Daytona 500 winner who floated the idea of a midseason tournament on his \u201cActions Detrimental\u201d podcast. When NASCAR bought into the idea and announced the creation of the tournament last year, Hamlin called the tournament on social media \u201csuch a win for our sport and drivers.\u201d He jokingly added, \u201cI will collect my 1M royalty next season.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hamlin earned the No. 1 seed \u2014 and was promptly eliminated in the first race by Ty Dillon, the No. 32 seed.<\/p>\n

Dillon faces Ty Gibbs next week at Indianapolis to decide the first winner of the tournament.<\/p>\n

Was the In-season challenge a success?<\/p>\n

Hamlin said the five-race, bracket-style tournament overall was a success \u2014 but not without a few kinks. Some of the seeding was off, such as Shane van Gisbergen<\/a> not qualifying for the field, then ripping off consecutive wins on the Chicago street race and Sonoma Raceway during the tournament races.<\/p>\n

And sure, everyone loves a Cinderella in March. But two in July isn\u2019t necessarily making the tournament the NASCAR story of the summer.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it has been unfortunate, right, you probably had a lot of the top seeds get knocked out pretty early in it, but overall, I thought the implementation of it has been good,\u201d Hamlin said.<\/p>\n

The other side of the argument is this: Would any fan or media outlet really care about a pair of winless drivers such as Gibbs (the sixth seed) or Dillon at this point of the season without $1 million at stake?<\/p>\n

\u201cFor a team like us, at this point in the season, we\u2019re not exactly where we want to be yet, but we\u2019re trending in a good direction,\u201d Dillon said on TNT. \u201cOur story doesn\u2019t get told in years past. It\u2019s mainly the guys trying to fight for the points position. It\u2019s the guys running up front, trying to win the race. But our story and our growth in the year stops getting told. I\u2019m grateful we\u2019ve been able to show our personality as a team.\u201d<\/p>\n

Unlike the All-Star race where the winner pockets $1 million, the driver with the best finish earns the cash prize, a ring, jackets and a trophy.<\/p>\n

How they fared<\/p>\n

Dillon had luck on his side during his run, with his lone top-10 finish coming in the first race in Atlanta. He advanced in that race after Hamlin crashed out and finished 31st. Dillon twice has finished 20th, including at Dover. He has a best finish of 13th in five career races on the Indy oval.<\/p>\n

Gibbs, the grandson of team owner and football and NASCAR Hall of Famer Joe Gibbs, and Dillon have failed to win in a combined 374 Cup races. Dillon has only two career top-five finishes in a career that dates to 2014. The 22-year-old Gibbs has a much better pedigree, winning the 2022 Xfinity Series title, a series in which he was a 12-time winner. He has six top 10s already this season and could make NASCAR\u2019s playoffs on points.<\/p>\n

Gibbs has three straight top 10s in the tournament, including a fifth-place finish at Dover. Gibbs finished 23rd on the Indy oval last season.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s done enough to impress his grandfather.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s some people there that we got off to a terrible start, it was awful, (but) I had people on that group that came to me encouraging me, ideas for me, after it. I think they care for Ty. It just was a huge deal,\u201d the 84-year-old Gibbs said. \u201cThis sport will really measure you. But those guys have fought back.\u201d<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

AP auto racing: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/auto-racing<\/a><\/p>\n

Copyright
\n \u00a9\u00a02025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, written or redistributed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Denny Hamlin, still driving the No. 11 Toyota for Joe Gibbs Racing as he\u2019s done since his rookie…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27378,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[70],"tags":[425,99],"class_list":["post-27377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nascar","tag-nascar","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27377"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27377\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27378"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}