Denny Hamlin has been asked the question innumerable times over the past two weeks, never mind the past 20 years as a star in NASCAR’s premier series.
Why will this be the year he finally wins a Cup championship?
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The eloquent podcast host and occasionally trash-talking antihero admittedly has no good answer.
“I don’t know why this would be different,” he said. “I can’t sit here and give you false promises and things like that. I’m just going to try as hard as I can. Maybe I can get lucky.”
Luck has little to do with the career arc of a driver who advanced to the Championship 4 with his 60th career victory (tying Kevin Harvick for 10th all time). Hamlin will be a surefire first-ballot selection to the 2031 class of the NASCAR Hall of Fame if he hangs up his helmet as expected at the end of a recently signed two-year contract extension.
Over 20 seasons, the 44-year-old has been the most consistently outstanding driver of his generation.
The case could be plausibly made that Hamlin, who is in the title round for the fifth time in 12 tries, could be racing for his eighth championship if more breaks had gone his way.
His first shot came as a rookie entering the 2006 season finale with an outside shot to win what was then called “the Chase.” Jimmie Johnson won his first of seven titles that day, and Hamlin has been plugging along ever since.
He leads the series with six victories but knows his title chances still are no better than 25% Sunday at Phoenix Raceway to be the best finisher against Kyle Larson, William Byron and Chase Briscoe.
“I wish I could tell you that we are just faster,” he said. “I’m optimistic about where we are running. These NASCAR races sometimes come down to things that are just unpredictable. You just hope that the things that are out of your control don’t inhibit you in any kind way.”
And perhaps therein lies the answer.
Maybe this is finally Denny Hamlin’s year because he’s run out of ways to lose it.
Ill-timed caution flags. Bizarre mechanical failures. Inexplicable blunders by driver, pit crew and team.
A lifetime of adversity that has left the best driver never to win a Cup championship saying for years that he’s at peace without a title.
“In pro sports, that’s something you just can’t teach someone,” team owner Joe Gibbs said. “They’ve got to experience it. I think Denny over these years, you listen to him in meetings, and with the experience and everything, he is really good for the young drivers, because he sees things just as a veteran would. He’s been through almost everything. He kind of understands it.”
Peruse two decades of quotes from Hamlin dissecting all those title failures, and a picture emerges of a man who has spent many hours mulling the limits of preparation and willpower.
This season, he has earned a two-week head start on the competition by winning the Round of 8 opener for the first time.
But mechanical problems keep cropping up — power steering issues, stuck throttles, engine failures — to remind him that he already has been let down so many times before.
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“The thoughts only creep in between all the work and stuff I have to do,” Hamlin said on his “Actions Detrimental” podcast when asked if he allows himself to think about winning the title. “It’s natural you have thoughts about ‘What if?’ That’s not going to drive the result. I’m old enough and wise enough now in my years doing this to know that the ‘what ifs?’ are not going to dictate the result. It’s what you do now, tomorrow and how you react when things don’t go as planned.
“I can lean on that experience. I’m just going to use all those results to refine how I approach this time around. I’m confident that if I don’t have any negative, unlucky breaks, I’m going to be there and in contention. It’s just a matter of if we have the speed and the execution. If we have those two things, I like our chances.”
But even if he does have both, there still won’t be any guarantee. That’s a hard and overarching lesson from a career full of near-misses at the title.
Here are the five most heartbreaking championship losses for Hamlin:
2010
Track: Homestead-Miami Speedway
Date: Nov. 21, 2010
The scene: Hamlin entered the season finale with a 15-point lead on Jimmie Johnson. The gap should have been much larger if not for a 12th-place finish at Phoenix Raceway, where Hamlin led a race-high 190 of 312 laps but needed an extra pit stop because of faulty carburetor settings that hurt his fuel mileage. He said all the right things afterward: “I’ll be all right. I’ll be OK. All I can do is concentrate on next week and put it behind me. Trust me, I’d rather race next week knowing I need to win the race than knowing I need to finish 15th. That’s the mentality I’m going to have next week.” But Hamlin seemed unable to shake the team’s error, appearing flustered during a Miami news conference a few days later as fellow title contenders Johnson and Kevin Harvick playfully took pot shots at the points leader.
The stumble: After qualifying 37th (31 spots behind Johnson), Hamlin was trying to make up the points needed to retake command of the championship. He had moved up to 18th and was attempting to pass Greg Biffle on the inside off Turn 2. Squeezed down the track by Paul Menard as they went three wide, Biffle contacted Hamlin, who spun through the backstretch grass. His No. 11 Toyota suffered suspension damage and was never the same. He refused to blame anyone for the crash. “Nobody’s fault at all. Just one of those things where it was not enough space for three cars at that point.”
Outcome: Hamlin got back on the lead lap and climbed to a 14th-place finish that left him 39 points behind Johnson, who finished second to Carl Edwards to win his record-extending fifth consecutive championship.
Quotable: “Our car was just unbelievably fast at the beginning. I knew we had a car that could contend for a win, and obviously, when we got in that incident on the back straightaway, it tore up the front, and obviously, the car did not drive as well for the rest of the day. We’ll just keep fighting and get ’em next year.”
2012
Track: Martinsville Speedway
Date: Oct. 28, 2012
The scene: The championship fight was a three-way battle with 20 points separating leader Brad Keselowski, Johnson, and Hamlin, who had the home-state advantage of entering his best track on the circuit. He qualified fifth and then sped on Lap 47 but still was fast enough to take his first lead on Lap 165. After another speeding penalty for pit entry on Lap 200 (prompting angry cries of disbelief from the No. 11 driver and crew chief Darian Grubb), Hamlin still was good enough to climb back into the lead with 150 laps remaining when disaster struck.
The stumble: In third place with just more than 100 laps remaining, Hamlin’s gauges suddenly began going haywire as his car shut off entirely. Pulling into the garage for repairs that dropped Hamlin 34 laps down, the culprit was discovered to be a broken bolt on a master electrical switch — a rare failure for a part unrelated to car performance and estimated to cost $40 by Sports Illustrated.
Outcome: Hamlin finished 33rd and fell two spots to fifth in the standings behind Clint Bowyer and Kasey Kahne, effectively ending his championship bid at the 0.526-mile oval he often has owned in his career.
Quotable: “It’s something that I couldn’t control. I’ve been in these Chases for seven years and I’ve had my fair share of electrical issues and motor issues and things like that. All I can do is just drive my heart out, and if it’s not meant to be, it’s not meant to be. We’ll have our time; it’s just our time is not now. … It sucks it’s got to end this way. Just got to suck it up and move on.”
2014
Track: Homestead-Miami Speedway
Date: Nov. 16, 2014
The scene: In the debut season of the elimination playoffs, Hamlin entered the Championship 4 with winless Ryan Newman and first-time championship contender Joey Logano as underdogs to favorite Kevin Harvick. After slogging through a mostly quiet survive-and-advance playoffs (aside from a Charlotte battle with Keselowski, 2014’s chief instigator), Hamlin came off his first top five (a fifth from the pole at Phoenix) in over two months, but still brought some swagger to South Florida as the defending winner at Homestead. Hamlin boldly proclaimed on his team radio after final practice Saturday that he would win the following day (he called his shot the same way in the 2013 season finale), and longtime friend and NBA legend Michael Jordan showed up on race day to join his cheering section. (“He asked for tickets. I told him we could handle that.”)
The stumble: There was no mistake this time, just a cruel twist of fate. Hamlin took the lead by staying on track for a restart on Lap 253 of 267. With Harvick having fallen out of the top 10 on his pit stop, there was a good chance Hamlin wins the race and championship if the race stays green … but it doesn’t with two yellow flags in the final 15 laps.
Outcome: Harvick seized the lead from Hamlin immediately after a Lap 259 restart and held off runner-up Ryan Newman on a three-lap shootout for the championship. Hamlin faded to seventh after leading 50 laps.
Quotable: “Obviously, we had a championship‑type car, championship‑type effort, but those last breaks just didn’t go our way. I thought we had the best car, and we just struggled with restart speed. We had a car that was capable of winning today. Our effort was 100 percent. It’s just that the breaks didn’t quite work out for us tonight. Strategy is part of winning, and the strategy for us didn’t work out with what happened with the cautions. The race goes green, maybe things probably are a lot different. But it’s a part of racing, and you can’t predict those things. I’m proud of the effort we put forth after the year we’ve had. … This is the third time around that I’ve had an opportunity to win a championship, but each one has been different, and this has by far been our best effort as far as trying to get it done.”
2019
Track: Homestead-Miami Speedway
Date: Nov. 17, 2019
The scene: Hamlin reached the Championship 4 with a must-win victory at Phoenix Raceway, his sixth of the season after a winless 2018 (his only year in Cup without a win). He entered the most recent championship race at Homestead-Miami Speedway with all the momentum in his first season with crew chief Chris Gabehart. He finished fifth in both stages, but his No. 11 Toyota seemed optimized for evening conditions and was gaining speed as night fell, so Gabehart made an aggressive call to bring Hamlin in for a final pit stop with 58 laps remaining — ahead of the other contenders.
The stumble: In a misguided attempt at an aerodynamic enhancement, the pit crew applied a massive swatch of tape to the front grille of Hamlin’s car. The adjustment resulted in too much restriction of airflow to the engine, which quickly began to overheat. Hamlin was forced to pit again from third place 12 laps later to address his spiking engine temperatures, wiping out his shot at the championship.
Outcome: Teammate Kyle Busch won the race and his second Cup championship with Joe Gibbs Racing’s record-setting 19th victory of the year. Despite the unscheduled second stop, Hamlin still managed to make up a lap and finish 10th as the race stayed green to the finish. Gabehart later admitted Hamlin might have won without the tape, given how fast he was. The crew chief took full blame for making the call that “wasn’t in our playbook. We just didn’t execute the play. I wish I could have it back and just not have been so greedy. What we tried to pull off is trying to win Homestead, and we let the emotion of the moment get the best of you trying to do it. We just got too aggressive, plain and simple. That’s OK. That’s on me.” Hamlin turned 39 the day after the race and said he still planned to have a party in Miami and expected Michael Jordan (who again was at the championship finale to root on his friend) to be in attendance.
Quotable: “I feel like I did all I could. I didn’t leave anything out there. The first half of the race, we just weren’t fast enough, and all of a sudden it went nighttime, and we took off, and suddenly I perked up and was thinking that we’ve got a chance. Then just didn’t work out. … I said I was going to do the best I could and live with the result either way. I definitely feel I couldn’t have done anything different. Certainly, we got a little aggressive, and it cost us, but (Gabehart) also has been really aggressive and won us races, too. It’s just he’s going for it. He saw an opportunity there to really add some speed to the car, and it just didn’t work out.”
2021
Track: Phoenix Raceway
Date: Nov. 7, 2021
The scene: In the previous Joe Gibbs Racing vs. Hendrick Motorsports showdown in the Championship 4, Hamlin was a decided two-win underdog with Kyle Larson being the overwhelming favorite with nine wins (and four in the playoffs). But in the final race with the Gen-6 car, the No. 11 Toyota hung in with the championship contenders, and the race seemed to be breaking Hamlin’s way late. He was ahead of title contenders Chase Elliott and Larson and closing on teammate Martin Truex Jr. for the lead. Just minutes after Gabehart radioed that “this is all playing out right,” debris from a lapped car’s broken rotor with 30 laps remaining brought out a yellow flag and the final pit stop of the five-lug nut era.
The stumble: Hamlin’s team executed a flawless pit stop and gained a position on Truex … but still lost the lead to Larson, who had the first pit stall after winning the pole and jumped three spots from fourth to first with an 11.8-second stop that was the team’s second fastest of the season.
Outcome: Unable to control the restart as the leader, Hamlin slipped from second to fourth. He recovered for third as Larson fended off several challenges by Truex for his 10th win and first championship. For the second consecutive year, Hamlin was the only Championship 4 contender without a lap led.
Quotable: “We knew after practice that we were going to have this go a certain way. It was going a certain type of way until 25 to go. Pit crew did a really good job in getting us out ahead of (Truex), and (Larson) just had a blazing fast stop, and the pit stall was such an advantage, that was it. He probably had the fourth-best car all day, and just once you get out front, that’s it. The first half of the race, we were kind of mediocre. But in the long run, we just were really fast. Just didn’t have that short-run speed. … I have to live with the result because I can’t change it. Disappointed, absolutely, for sure. But I knew going into today I was going to need the race to go a certain way. If it goes the way it did last year, it goes green, we’re probably winning. But it didn’t.”
