Denny Hamlin continues climb in NASCAR's career wins list. With 60 in sight, how far can he go?
Easy to say, of course, with 58 race victories to zero titles.
The 44-year-old Hamlin, still driving the No. 11 Toyota for Joe Gibbs Racing as he's 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.
Best to take advantage at tracks where he's had success, such as Dover Motor Speedway, where he won Sunday for the second straight year and third time overall, compared with a track like this weekend's race on the Indianapolis oval, where Hamlin is 0 for 16.
'I don't think I've ever wanted to go back to back so bad,' Hamlin said of Dover. '(Indy's) a track that I've just come so fricking close to winning. I just want to cross off all the major racetracks on our schedule.'
Hamlin is a driver who thrives in the chaos like few others — if any can — 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 . 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.
Maybe more dark clouds — like the ones that opened up Sunday, causing a rain delay just laps ahead of the scheduled finish — can fuel Hamlin at Indy.
'All I can hope is that something happens this week that derails everything and then I'll do better,' Hamlin said.
Hamlin then turned to a NASCAR employee and cracked, 'Maybe it'll come from them.'
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.
'When you get him in a situation where he's got the ball in his hands and it's time to go win the race, he finds a way to do that most times,' crew chief Chris Gayle said.
It's a fitting analogy for a race team owned by a former NFL coach.
At his pace, Hamlin remains a contender to cash in this November at Phoenix Raceway and win his first NASCAR championship — even if he lost out on the $1 million prize in the series' first In-season challenge.
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 'Actions Detrimental' podcast. When NASCAR bought into the idea and announced the creation of the tournament last year, Hamlin called the tournament on social media 'such a win for our sport and drivers.' He jokingly added, 'I will collect my 1M royalty next season.'
Hamlin earned the No. 1 seed — and was promptly eliminated in the first race by Ty Dillon, the No. 32 seed.
Dillon faces Ty Gibbs next week at Indianapolis to decide the first winner of the tournament.
Hamlin said the five-race, bracket-style tournament overall was a success — but not without a few kinks. Some of the seeding was off, such as Shane van Gisbergen not qualifying for the field, then ripping off consecutive wins on the Chicago street race and Sonoma Raceway during the tournament races.
And sure, everyone loves a Cinderella in March. But two in July isn't necessarily making the tournament the NASCAR story of the summer.
'I 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,' Hamlin said.
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?
'For a team like us, at this point in the season, we're not exactly where we want to be yet, but we're trending in a good direction,' Dillon said on TNT. 'Our story doesn't get told in years past. It's mainly the guys trying to fight for the points position. It's the guys running up front, trying to win the race. But our story and our growth in the year stops getting told. I'm grateful we've been able to show our personality as a team.'
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.
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.
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's playoffs on points.
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.
He's done enough to impress his grandfather.
'There's 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,' the 84-year-old Gibbs said. 'This sport will really measure you. But those guys have fought back.'
___
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an hour ago
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INDIANAPOLIS — Bubba Wallace climbed out of the No. 23 car Sunday, pumped his fists, found his family and savored every precious moment of a historic Brickyard 400 victory. He deserved every minute of it. The 31-year-old Wallace overcame a tenuous 18-minute rain delay, two tantalizing overtimes, fears about running out of fuel late and the hard-charging defending race champ, Kyle Larson, on back-to-back restarts to become the first Black driver to win a major race on Indianapolis Motor Speedway's 2.5-mile oval. No Black driver has won the Indianapolis 500, and Formula 1 raced on the track's road course. 'This one's really cool,' Wallace said. 'Coming off Turn 4, I knew I was going to get there — unless we ran out of gas. I was surprised I wasn't crying like a little baby.' His third career NASCAR Cup victory delivered Wallace's first victory in the series' four crown jewel events, the others being the Daytona 500, Coca-Cola 600 and Southern 500. 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The beloved Sesame Street character, who served as the Brickyard's grand marshal, attended driver introductions and took a handful of questions before the race and even offered some advice to the drivers. 'Don't stop and ask for directions,' the furry blue character said. Up next
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Bubba Wallace becomes first Black driver to win a major race on Indianapolis' oval
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Bubba Wallace climbed out of the No. 23 car Sunday, pumped his fists, found his family and savored every precious moment of a historic Brickyard 400 victory. He deserved every minute of it. The 31-year-old Wallace overcame a tenuous 18-minute rain delay, two tantalizing overtimes, fears about running out of fuel late and the hard-charging defending race champ, Kyle Larson, on back-to-back restarts to become the first Black driver to win a major race on Indianapolis Motor Speedway's 2.5-mile oval. No Black driver has won the Indianapolis 500, and Formula 1 raced on the track's road course. 'This one's really cool,' Wallace said. 'Coming off Turn 4, I knew I was going to get there — unless we ran out of gas. I was surprised I wasn't crying like a little baby.' His third career NASCAR Cup victory delivered Wallace's first victory in the series' four crown jewel events, the others being the Daytona 500, Coca-Cola 600 and Southern 500. It also snapped a 100-race winless streak that dated to 2022 at Kansas and locked up a playoff spot. His only other win came at Talladega in 2021. The final gap was 0.222 seconds, but that was no measure of the consternation he faced. Larson cut a 5.057-second deficit with 14 laps to go to about three seconds with six laps left as the yellow flag came out for the rain. The cars then rolled to a stop on pit lane with four laps remaining, forcing Wallace to think and rethink his restart strategy. 'The whole time I'm thinking are we going? Are we not?' he said. 'I will say I leaned more towards 'I know we're going to go back racing. Be ready. Don't get complacent here.' Wallace made sure of it. He beat Larson through the second turn on the first restart only to have a crash behind him force a second overtime, forcing his crew to recalculate whether they had enough fuel to finish the race or whether he needed to surrender the lead and refuel. In Wallace's mind, there was no choice. 'The first thing that went through my mind was, 'Here we go again,'' he said. 'But then I said, `I want to win this straight up. I want to go back racing.' Here we are.' He beat Larson off the restart again and pulled away, preventing Larson from becoming the race's fourth back-to-back winner. The victory also alleviated the frustration Wallace felt Saturday when he spent most of the qualifying session on the provisional pole only to see Chase Briscoe claim the No. 1 starting spot with one of the last runs in the session. On Sunday, he made sure there was no repeat, providing an added boost to the 23XI Racing team co-owned by basketball Hall of Famer Michael Jordan and last week's race winner, Denny Hamlin, as it continues to battle NASCAR in court over its charter status. 'Those last 20 laps there were ups and downs and I was telling myself 'You won't be able to do it,'' Wallace said. 'Once I'd seen it was Larson, I knew he won here last year and he's arguably the best in the field. So to beat the best, we had to be the best today.' The other big race — the In-Season Challenge — went to Ty Gibbs, who had a better car than Ty Dillon in qualifying and on race day. Gibbs finished 21st o win the inaugural March Madness-like single-elimination tournament and collect the $1 million prize. Dillon, a surprise championship round entrant after making the field as the 32nd and final driver, finished 28th. 'They brought me money guns and they jammed so I decided to take all the money and throwing it to the fans and they were all wrestling and fighting over it,' said Gibbs, who also received a title belt and a ring. 'But it's super cool. It's a cool opportunity.' Tire troubles At different points, Austin Cindric and three-time Cup champion Joey Logano appeared to be in control of the race, but tire problems took them out of contention. Eric Jones also was knocked out of the race when his right front tire came off between Turns 3 and 4, sending him hard into the outside wall on Lap 91. They weren't the only drivers who made early exits. Ross Chastain was the first out after just 18 laps when a tap from Michael McDowell sent Chastain's car spinning into the third turn wall and caused heavy damage. The others who were out before Lap 100 were Austin Dillon, Ricky Stenhouse Jr. and Cody Ware. Weathering the storm Series officials were concerned enough about the threat of rain that they moved up the start time by 10 minutes. Fifteen minutes probably would have eliminated the rain delay. But the threat of rain impacted the race long before the delay. Early in the second stage, some teams informed drivers rain was expected near the midway point and it seemed to increase the aggressiveness earlier in the race than expected. Monster advice Cookie Monster made it to the track Sunday, too. The beloved Sesame Street character, who served as the Brickyard's grand marshal, attended driver introductions and took a handful of questions before the race and even offered some advice to the drivers. 'Don't stop and ask for directions,' the furry blue character said. Up next Cup drivers will continue their brief Midwestern tour next Sunday when they race at Iowa. ___ AP auto racing: Michael Marot, The Associated Press
