Given the way Denny Hamlin was denied the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series championship, with a caution coming out with just over two laps remaining in the season finale at Phoenix Raceway while he was cruising away from the field, there was speculation in the aftermath of Kyle Larson's no-laps-led championship triumph that Hamlin could pull a Carl Edwards.
Edwards was similarly denied the 2016 championship, and though he vowed to come back stronger in 2017, he decided before the 2017 season began to call it quits, and he has never returned since.
However, Hamlin might have actually retired for the opposite reason. Had he won the title, he might have gone out on top earlier this month, he recently admitted.
“I would have begged Joe [Gibbs] to let me quit had I won that race,” Hamlin said on his Actions Detrimental podcast, an admission which implies Joe Gibbs Racing might have been left scrambling for a new driver of the No. 11 Toyota for 2026.
In 2017, they pivoted to 2016 Xfinity Series champion Daniel Suarez, who lasted just two seasons with the team as Edwards' replacement.
Denny Hamlin might have retired as a NASCAR Cup Series champion already
First things first: Hamlin is set to be back behind the wheel of the No. 11 Toyota for his 21st season with Joe Gibbs Racing next year. He is not pulling a Carl Edwards, barring something catastrophic happening between now and February. And while it made for a lot of clicks and social media engagement in the aftermath of the Phoenix stunner, he never was.
But the Chesterfield, Virginia native, who at 45 years old is now the oldest active full-time driver in the series, signed a two-year extension in 2025 to remain with Joe Gibbs Racing through 2027.
The fact that he actually might have retired following a championship-winning season in 2025 shows he's long been thinking about what it would mean for his already Hall of Fame-worthy career to go out on top, even with a contract.
And it means he might do exactly that in 2026.
If Hamlin manages to win the championship in 2026, don't expect him to return in 2027, save for maybe a couple races – possibly in a fourth entry run by the Gibbs-supported 23XI Racing team he co-owns with NBA legend Michael Jordan. And given what he has meant to Joe Gibbs Racing for the past two decades, don't expect any pushback from Gibbs, either.
Nobody knows exactly how NASCAR plans to crown a champion in 2026 just yet, however, as changes to the playoff format seem inevitable. The exact changes remain to be seen, but Hamlin and Larson are listed as the early co-favorites to win the Bill France Cup next year.
Let's hope NASCAR doesn't pull out all the stops just to stop the guy who's suing them from hoisting it, like some say they did at Phoenix.
Hamlin is set to try to become the third driver to win at least four Daytona 500s in the 2026 edition of the "Great American Race". The 68th running is set to be shown live on Fox from Daytona International Speedway beginning at 2:30 p.m. ET on Sunday, February 15. He won the race in 2016, 2019, and 2020.