For 26 weeks in the 2026 NASCAR Cup Series season, everything was coming up Denny Hamlin. He won four races and the regular season title, earning the top seed in the Chase for the Cup. He led the series in virtually every statistical category besides wins, and his No. 11 team had executed better than anybody else in the garage.
Even when Hamlin ran poorly, he'd somehow appear near the front by the end of the race. Aside from minor incidents in the Daytona 500 and at Sonoma Raceway, it was hard to find one single bad thing that happened to him all season.
Of course, no one can avoid the bad luck monster forever. And in the first two races of the Chase, Hamlin has been bitten by hitting the wall at Darlington Raceway and a slow pit stop at World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway that dropped him to uninspiring finishes of 18th and ninth.
Yet with eight races to go, he's still the points leader as he searches for his elusive first Cup championship.
Someone had better get Denny Hamlin while he's down, because he's not going to stay down
Kyle Larson and Christopher Bell have both finally broken into the win column in 2026 the past two weeks, and they're now Hamlin's closest challengers after Ryan Blaney was a victim of an exploded brake rotor at Gateway. But whether either of them can sustain their momentum remains to be seen.
There are two sides to Hamlin's situation. On the one hand, he's been beyond unsustainably fortunate with his finishes this year. When he has issues, they've only dropped him to the teens. When other drivers like Blaney have issues, they've ended up in the 30s.
And because NASCAR must dumb down its points system for people who never advanced past basic addition, that's what's going to determine the championship.
If Hamlin has even one or two DNFs during the Chase and doesn't return to his early season form, you can stick a fork in him. But at the same time, the field needs to be able to capitalize on his recent vulnerability. So far, they've still let him keep the upper hand.
After next weekend's race at Bristol Motor Speedway, the Cup Series is set to visit three consecutive 1.5-mile intermediates, where Hamlin has been most dominant this season. He could very well win all three and for all intents and purposes put the title race away.
If Hamlin still looks mortal during that stretch, he's in trouble. But at the same time, if none of Larson, Blaney, Bell, or anybody else out of the pack can get hot and stay hot, they might as well hand over the trophy.
Right now, the field has thrown some solid punches in Hamlin's direction. But they'd better hope they can land the knockout blow before he punches back.
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