SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Two days after the most devastating moment of his racing career, Denny Hamlin said he is far from ready to get back into a race car.
Good thing he has about three months.
Hamlin was less than three laps away from winning the 2025 Cup Series title when William Byron crashed, resulting in a caution. Hamlin took four tires on the ensuing pit stop, restarted in ninth and couldn’t catch Kyle Larson, who restarted fifth and finished second to beat Hamlin and capture the championship.
Larson didn’t lead a lap all day but still finished best among the four drivers eligible for the title. Hamlin led 208 of the 319 laps.
After a dominant 2025 NASCAR season, Denny Hamlin fell short when it mattered most.
Having signed a contract extension through 2027, Hamlin indicated Tuesday prior to the NASCAR Awards show that he would race next season. However, at the moment, he doesn’t want to get in a race car.
“I have a contract to [race], however at this level, there’s simply completely no means that I might even — I do not even take into consideration a race automotive proper now,” Hamlin stated. “I will want a while on this one.
“The excellent news is the banquet is 2 weeks earlier, so the offseason is slightly bit longer. However I am going to recover from it. It’s simply going to take a minute.”
It was the fifth time Hamlin had made the Champ 4 and never received the title. He additionally didn’t win in his finest shot in 2010, when he led the factors going into the ultimate race of the 10-race championship format.
This damage the worst.
“This minimize is deep,” Hamlin stated. “No means [comparable to others], not shut. This one’s deep.”
Denny Hamlin and Jordan Fish embrace on the grid after the NASCAR Cup Sequence Championship at Phoenix Raceway.
Hamlin received six instances in 2025 and now has 60 profession victories, by far essentially the most of any driver who has by no means received a title. Figuring out how a lot work it takes to get to this spot is weighing on Hamlin.
“Within the second, I can not think about having to undergo the method I went via to arrange for that race,” Hamlin stated. “Doing it yet again, I do not simply see how there’s any means.”
Hamlin nonetheless appeared in slightly little bit of disbelief.
“You’ve got seen me lose this in so many alternative methods, from the mechanical failures to only loopy issues, however I do not know. This one simply provides to the checklist,” Hamlin stated. “Nothing modified the way in which I felt about myself on the finish of that race, and to make use of Carl Edwards’ quote, ‘I knew what it was prefer to be a champion.’
“I felt it. With 5 [laps] to go, I knew it was over. I haven’t got the trophy, however I knew that was most likely the primary time that I used to be pressured to carry out a sure means underneath this format, and I did it. There’s nothing else I probably might have achieved to alter the end result.”
Hamlin stated the warning for Byron hitting the wall was the best name by NASCAR. He additionally stated that taking 4 tires was most likely the best name within the second by his crew chief Chris Gayle.
“In the event you would have simply blind advised us that there was going to be 9, 10 automobiles on not 4 tires, we’d have modified our technique,” Hamlin stated. “There’s simply no means Chris Gayle was going to say, ‘OK, I am going to begin ninth and I’ve bought religion.’
How will Hamlin strategy the offseason after leaving Phoenix empty-handed?
“There is no means. …. We had no concept that many individuals have been going to go in there and say, ‘All proper, I am going to put myself in the midst of the Championship 4,’ and so I feel possibly among the thought course of, too, is that there is not going to be too many loopy methods or totally different methods right here as a result of most likely nobody desires to be a part of the ending story. But it surely simply labored out the way in which it did.”
It was when Hamlin noticed the place Larson was on the monitor after the two-lap additional time restart that he knew Larson would win.
“I do not suppose I noticed them till the white-flag lap,” Hamlin stated. “I can not bear in mind a lap the place he was forward of me at any level of the race. I bear in mind seeing him for the very first time proper after we took the white [flag] within the dogleg … as a result of they advised me on the backstretch with two to go, the 5 [of Larson] is pinned on the surface.
“I believed he was one of many automobiles I used to be clearing in [Turns] 3 and 4 [with one to go]. So once I noticed him [on the outside], I knew then that it was over. I had solely a few half a lap to three-quarters of a lap to say, ‘Oh my God, he’s gonna win.’ I feel that is the place the shock got here from.”
Hamlin and Larson are associates, and Hamlin went to Larson’s championship celebration Sunday night time.
“Simply pay my respects. I might hope that he would have achieved that for me,” Hamlin stated. “I feel he would have. He is been an amazing buddy of mine. I hate for him that the eye has shifted slightly bit away from him and his championship as a result of … there is a distinction in deserving and should-have-been, proper?
“There’s not one individual that ought to ever query his deserving of being a champion. That’s what I do not prefer to see. … I used to be simply attempting to do the best factor as a buddy and no matter my emotions and feelings that night, it was vital for me to go present him help.”
How lengthy did he keep?
“Not lengthy,” Hamlin stated.
And Hamlin was dreading the season-ending awards ceremony tonight.
“It will not be as agonizing as having to sit down via two hours of tonight,” Hamlin stated. “You may say we’re the one sport that ‘clean’ a lot of issues, however having to make the losers sit there and rejoice the winners is simply a kind of further issues that we’ve to do in our sport that is painful.”
Bob Pockrass covers NASCAR and INDYCAR for FOX Sports activities. He has spent a long time overlaying motorsports, together with over 30 Daytona 500s, with stints at ESPN, Sporting Information, NASCAR Scene journal and The (Daytona Seashore) Information-Journal. Comply with him on Twitter @bobpockrass.
