Denny Hamlin details the moment he knew NASCAR – Sports News
Denny Hamlin has endured championship heartbreak earlier than, however by no means fairly like this.
After dominating almost each lap of the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series Championship Race at Phoenix Raceway, the veteran driver watched the title slip from his grasp in the closing mile, a moment he later described in agonising element, and prompted an emotional household journey a week later.
The race itself had seemed to be Hamlin’s breakthrough. Starting from the pole with a time of 26.914 seconds, he managed each the tempo and discipline, main a race-high 208 of 319 laps beneath scheduled 312-lap distance in the Championship occasion.
But the turning level arrived when a late warning erased Hamlin’s benefit and despatched the race into time beyond regulation. The discipline was reset, and from the restart Hamlin slipped out of place. Meanwhile, Kyle Larson opted for a two-tire stop and gained monitor place.
Larson would declare the championship whereas Hamlin light to sixth. He didn’t win the championship for the fifth time beneath the elimination playoff format. In his podcast, Hamlin broke down precisely when he realized the race, and the championship, was misplaced.
“Over the last 15 years, we really took a jump towards entertainment. Race your best in this one race, and that’s going to make you a champion. That’s what they wanted it to come down to was one race, and you’ve got to perform your best during that race.”
He continued: “And for 312 laps, not one time was that ‘number five’ out in front of me… Unfortunately, he was on lap like 315.”
Even in the green-white-checker, Hamlin believed he nonetheless had a shot. “I thought I was fine… In the sense that all I remember hearing the spotter say is that you’re three-wide bottom and the five is stuck up top.”
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Then got here the deadly radio call: “I thought he was the third car on the outside of me… And so when I go into Turn 3 and I clear whoever those cars are, I thought that was it. I thought I was past him at that point.”
But Hamlin’s readability got here in the dogleg: “It’s not till we cross the white and we went to the dogleg and the cars fanned out to where you could see them all, and I saw the five, and I saw him right there with three-quarters of a mile to go, and I knew at that point, oh my God, it’s over. At that point, I knew that he had won, we had lost.”
It was a brutal realization for a driver who had executed almost flawlessly for more than 300 laps, and a reminder that in NASCAR’s championship format, dominance solely issues if it lasts till the checkered flag.
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