After Denny Hamlin was denied what would have been his first NASCAR Cup Series championship when a controversial caution flag came out with under three laps remaining in the 2025 season finale at Phoenix Raceway, there were immediate comparisons to what happened at the end of the 2016 season at Homestead-Miami Speedway with Carl Edwards.
Edwards vowed to come back stronger, but before the 2017 season started, he abruptly retired from the sport, largely due to the cruel nature by which he was denied the championship, plus the fact that what happened proved an entire 36-race season can effectively be undone by one untimely yellow in the final race of the year.
Hamlin was never going to do the same thing; in fact, he admitted after the season ended that he would have been more likely to retire had he won the championship, ensuring that he could go out on top. He stated that he would have had to beg Joe Gibbs to let him walk away, effectively putting to bed the rumors that he would have walked away following the heartbreaking loss.
But Hamlin's troubles over the offseason did not stop with a heartbreak in the championship decider. Sure, the lawsuit against NASCAR was finally settled after 14 long and grueling months back in December. But just after Christmas, Hamlin's terminally ill father was killed as a result of a housefire. His mother was injured but thankfully continues to recover.
Hamlin, who has long talked about the sacrifices made by his parents to get him to where he is in his racing career, had referenced as the 2025 season progressed that it would be his father's last chance to see his son potentially win a championship, which was yet another reason why the end of the season was so taxing.
Yet even knowing that, nobody knew at that time the tragic nature by which Dennis Hamlin would be taken from the world.
And nobody would have blamed Denny had he simply decided it was time to step away.
However, that won't happen either.
Hamlin is looking forward to getting back in the No. 11 Toyota in next weekend's preseason Cook Out Clash exhibition race at Bowman Gray Stadium, and he has even admitted that getting back in the swing of things, with the season officially scheduled to get underway two weekends later with the 68th annual Daytona 500 at Daytona International Speedway, is probably the best medicine.
We hear all the time in sports how "you either die a hero or you live long enough to become the villain." Hamlin has been the villain, a role he has embraced, for years. Yet given everything he's dealt with over the past several months, that quote might have to change.
Because in Denny's case, "you either die a villain, or you live long enough to become the hero."
It would have been hard to imagine, even early on during the 2025 season playoffs, a world where the NASCAR community actually rallies behind the driver of the No. 11 car, or even one where the majority of the fanbase simply decided not to go out of their collective way root against him.
But we have now reached a point where there is perhaps no driver in the series whom the fanbase wants to see have success in 2026. And if he does finally manage to capture that elusive championship, perhaps then he can walk away on his own terms. Can he capture a fourth Daytona 500 win first?