LAS VEGAS — This was supposed to be the week Denny Hamlin quelled all concerns and fought back into definitive championship contention. Instead, his title hopes may have dimmed … again.
Starting from the Busch Light pole position, Hamlin had ample speed in Sunday‘s South Point 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. But by the end of the opening stage, the No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota was coming from behind.
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Hamlin spun from fourth place while chasing Christopher Bell and Ryan Blaney with three laps remaining in Stage 1, costing himself crucial stage points. Cutting across the apron damaged the splitter on the No. 11, and his car was never the same afterward.
“Just trying to make up track position that we lost and trying to push to get it back,” Hamlin told a group of reporters after taking the checkered flag in 16th position. “Evidently, there was marbles or something up there — it was quite odd. I went up there to try to get a run and just spun out and obviously damaged the car.
“They are telling me every point matters, and I was trying to get the spots back that we lost.”
The damage to Hamlin‘s track position was done well before the Lap 77 spin. When Zane Smith spun on Lap 43, Chris Gayle, crew chief of the No. 11, called Hamlin to pit road for two fresh Goodyear tires. It proved to be a double whammy: Kyle Larson‘s No. 5 team had taken a major gamble during the opening stage and lost a lap after a 26-second pit stop for mass adjustments, but the caution allowed him to take the wave-around. Eight cars stayed on the track, putting Hamlin ninth for the restart.
Hamlin worked his way back to fourth with relative ease, but closing the gap to the two cars ahead proved far more difficult. In hindsight, Gayle admitted he would like a mulligan on the decision, opting instead to keep Hamlin on the track rather than send him to pit road and drop the No. 11 back through the field.
“I worry more about the part of it that I can control and the part of it I can control is, I probably should not have pitted there,” a fiery Gayle said post-race. “That‘s what took us from the lead — the 19 and 20 stayed behind us and a few guys after the green-flag cycle that stayed there. That‘s where we pit, I knew five or six guys would stay out — we had a couple more better cars with the 19 and 20 staying out.”
After dropping into the low 20s, Hamlin rallied to 14th by the end of Stage 2. His race took another major hit on Lap 170 when the No. 11 lost fuel pressure while preparing for a restart, costing him another 12 positions. Hamlin clawed back a handful of spots over the final 96-lap run to finish 16th, second among the Joe Gibbs Racing entries after the organization had its cars running first through fourth in the opening laps, seemingly setting the stage for a Toyota runaway.
Instead, Larson holds the championship lead by 40 points over Hamlin with five races remaining in the 2026 campaign.
“You just have to play the ball where it lies,” Hamlin said, “and where it lies is we have a little gap we‘ve got to make up so we‘ve got to perform at our best.”
Gayle was even more frustrated to have surrendered 14 points on a day when the No. 11 team appeared poised to gain momentum.
“It sucked. It don‘t matter, what did we finish 16th? I didn‘t even look at it, I was so mad,” a blunt Gayle stated. “Great that we‘re only 40 out, so we gave up 14. Great that we didn‘t give up more than that because we probably deserved to.”
Through the first five events in The Chase presented by Mobil 1, Hamlin has an average finish of 10.8, scoring a best of third last week at Kansas Speedway. Compare that to Larson‘s heater of a 2.2 average finish in those same races — all top fives — and the No. 5 team has gained 95 points on the No. 11 bunch in that timeframe.
Hamlin and the JGR brass know that, despite the speed bumps that have dotted the first half of the postseason, there is still plenty of racing left before the championship is settled.
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“We haven‘t had any [catastrophic] days but certainly had our fair share of not performing,” a subdued Hamlin said. “Today, leaving a bazillion points on the table considering where we were before the wreck.”
But team owner Joe Gibbs has seen this story before and isn‘t willing to give up hope yet.
“I think it‘s pretty miraculous considering everything that‘s happened in these first five races,” Gibbs acknowledged. “Everybody can see, you win a race and have a day like Chase [Briscoe] did today, you get 70-something points — I think that‘s where we are with the 11. We need a win, and I think we will be right on top of it. We‘ve got five races. I only go off of the first five and it‘s been wild. I think the next five will be the same way.”
