Larson’s NASCAR title comes at the heartbreaking expense of Hamlin
Even now, nearly 24 hours after the accident, it’s difficult to properly process what happened to Denny Hamlin in the 2025 NASCAR season finale.
“At this moment, I never want to race a car again,” he said Sunday night.
The greatest driver in 77 years of NASCAR racing who never had his name engraved on the coveted trophy produced the greatest season of his two-decade career and dominated the final event of the season. His goal was to be the top 4. He did it, driving through an obstacle course on an evening that threw everything he had at the 44-year-old with a host of past heartbreaks in the season’s final title chances. There were bad pit stops, near misses, and a clutch that was softer than a marshmallow, but he still won the pole and led 208 of the race’s 312 scheduled laps, including the final 28 laps in regulation…before that regulation went into overtime.
What happened next was difficult to accept for those who watched it on screen or from their seats – all horror movies are – but it was even more impossible to comprehend for those who were behind the wheels of the race cars on Sunday night. And even the beneficiary of it all.
“Honestly, I can’t believe it yet,” Kyle Larson admitted Monday afternoon, calling from Phoenix after only an hour and a half of sleep, a night wasted to celebrate his second Cup championship, only the 18th driver in NASCAR history to do so. But also mixed with the cause of his insomnia, there was more than just survival guilt. “It’s a weird feeling, you’re so excited because you won the championship, but you know, I have a heart. Denny is a great competitor and a good friend. To see someone come so close to winning a championship every time, and have it within his grasp, and do everything right all day and weekend and have it taken away from him so late… When I finally get to see him later tonight, I don’t even know what to say. Like, I’m like, ‘Sorry.'”
“Sorry” is exactly what Larson’s Hendrick Motorsports teammate William Byron said He said to Hamlin when they were on stage together In the media center after the race. It was Byron, a member of that champion 4, who was desperately trying to stay within striking distance of Hamlin late, who hit the wall and brought out the yellow flag that hit the reset button that triggered overtime that sent all the leaders onto pit road. During that final pit stop, Hamlin — who took four tires while the others took two or fewer — lost the lead, the race and the championship.
It was in the same pit lane where countless competitors lined up to try to console Hamlin after the checkered flag, after he eventually dropped to sixth in the race and second in the standings, three points behind Larson, who finished three points ahead of third.
It certainly wasn’t the first time a racer had lost a tournament that seemed so inevitable. It also wasn’t the first time that several other racers had come alongside a competitor’s car to hug their nervous necks. But this moment was also unique because it was a unique combination of the two.
In 1998, when Dale Earnhardt finally won the Daytona 500, crew members from every other team lined up for the top five man who had finally snapped a two-decade losing streak in the biggest race in the sport. In 1984, when Richard Petty claimed his 200th career victory, his rivals also joined in the celebration, and even Cale Yarborough — the man who lost to Petty by fractions of a second — was on hand for a post-race picnic with the King and President Ronald Reagan. The Petty and Earnhardt families were once again surrounded by fellow racers after the deaths of Adam Petty in 2000 and Earnhardt the following year. In July 2001, the sport celebrated with Dale Earnhardt Jr. when he won the first race at Daytona after his father’s death in the 500 five months earlier.
Over the course of nearly eight decades, there have been plenty of instances where triumphs and tragedies have united the Cup Series garage, but never have they all been swept away in the same wave of emotion by what a racer failed to accomplish as we saw happen Sunday night in Phoenix. Even when it’s a driver like Hamlin, who has made his career far from divisive, whether it’s looking toward the grandstand and declaring to the crowd “I just beat your favorite driver,” using his podcast to call out competitors or taking the entire sport to court with antitrust lawsuits, which he will do in December.
“It’s because we’ve all seen how hard Denny works seeing as everything he’s accomplished, so he deserves to be a champion,” Larson continued. “I hope one day, before it gets stuck, he can experience what it’s like. I think it will be a very rewarding feeling for him. Especially now.”
It’s a reminder of what Hamlin did to deserve that title no one wants: the greatest never to win it all. In the annals of NASCAR history, this is a three-driver race.
Junior Johnson, also known as The Last American Champion, won 50 races as a driver without a championship – although, as he often liked to remind us, he had never run an entire season in search of a title. Mark Martin won 40 races and finished in the top five in the Cup standings 13 times, including an astonishing five second-place efforts. Hamlin earned his 60th career win in October, the win that gave him his title at Phoenix, where he tied for 10th on the all-time wins list which includes three Daytona 500 victories. It was his 10th time finishing fifth in the final standings and his second runner-up finish.
All of Hamlin’s near-trophy came during the postseason Chase/Playoff era in NASCAR. This season was punctuated by postseason exploratory committee meetings of which Hamlin was a member. Coming into Phoenix, there was still some controversy over scrapping the current single-race, four-driver, highest-placed Cup format that had been in place since 2014. When Hamlin made his way to the front for the final time, there seemed to be the weakest part of the “this still works, we’ll show you” fight in that format.
Now, anyone left who dares to consider even the smallest modicum of support looks at the smoldering remains of Denny Hamlin’s 2025 season and says, “Yeah, to hell with it.” And yes, that includes the man who has now won two trophies via that one-night bracket.
“I think we would all feel like we had a better chance of winning the championship if there were more races taken into account,” Larson said. “So, if it’s 36 races or ten races or four, whatever the number is, I think I’ll feel like I have a better chance than just doing one race.”
Why is that, hero?
“Because, as yesterday showed, you could have the best car and do the best job like Denny and not leave the champion. That doesn’t feel right. And we all definitely feel that today.”