For as hot as Denny Hamlin was in late May and early June, he entered Iowa Speedway winless in nearly two months. And when he qualified 29th for Sunday's Iowa Corn 350, it almost felt like history repeating itself: the No. 11 team looks unbeatable during the regular season, only to fade when things actually start to matter.
In fact, Ty Gibbs was Joe Gibbs Racing's only driver to qualify higher than 20th for the short track race, coming off of NASCAR's final off weekend of the season, to begin the 14-week run of Cup Series races to conclude the 2026 season.
It's no secret that Joe Gibbs Racing has been the team to beat all season, but for all that's been made of their alleged dominance, their only win of the summer thus far was Chase Briscoe's victory at Chicagoland Speedway more than a month ago.
Perhaps the Iowa race, which saw four teams other than Joe Gibbs Racing qualify in the top five, and both Ford's top qualifier and Chevrolet's top qualifier outqualify Toyota's top qualifier, would start to show that they had indeed been brought back down to earth.
Instead, it proved the opposite.
Joe Gibbs Racing might be the only elite NASCAR Cup team
At a venue where Toyota had yet to win at the Cup level, Joe Gibbs Racing managed to take four of the top six positions, with Ty Gibbs earning his second victory of the year, Christopher Bell earning his series-high seventh runner-up finish, Hamlin extending his points lead in fifth, and Briscoe quietly finishing sixth.
Coincidentally, JGR now occupies four of the top six spots in the point standings, including the top two after Gibbs leapfrogged Team Penske's Ryan Blaney and 23XI Racing's Tyler Reddick with his win. Again, even for all the talk of their dominance, the JGR drivers not named Hamlin had only started the day fourth, seventh, and 10th in points.
At this point, it's hard to imagine the championship will not go the way of Joe Gibbs Racing, which hasn't won a title since the late Kyle Busch earned his second in 2019.
Hamlin had it seemingly won a year ago, before a late caution with over two laps to go reduced an entire 36-race season to a lucky tire gamble and subsequent green-white-checkered, handing it to a driver who still hasn't won a race since May 2025.
But this year, it's about consistency. And nobody has had consistent top-tier speed like Joe Gibbs Racing. As long as they even continue to execute on a semi-consistent basis, it's hard to imagine anybody standing in their way.
The only points reset is set to occur after the regular season concludes at Daytona International Speedway, and playoff seeding is set to be determined strictly by regular season points. From there, it's an all-out points battle for 10 races to wrap up the year, with no more three-race "win and in" playoff rounds.
Is everyone else a pretender?
Sure, Reddick proved early in the season that he can get hot. But he's been a non-factor lately, and given the fact that he led more than 10 laps in only three of his five wins, perhaps he wasn't as dominant as it appeared when he was winning all those races early on.
Sure, Blaney has been the epitome of consistency all year long. But winning still matters, and he's done that just once since, technically speaking, the end of winter. Even in a format that places more of an emphasis on points than the previous iteration, you're not going to win a championship by racking up sixths, sevenths, eighths, ninths, and 10ths, which is what he has done for much of the summer.
As for Hendrick Motorsports, their top driver is Chase Elliott in seventh in the standings, and right now that team is an also-ran, to the point where they're almost not even worth mentioning.
Elliott doesn't have a top 10 finish since May, Kyle Larson doesn't have a top 10 finish since June, William Byron is nowhere near where he was when he qualified for three straight Championship 4s from 2023 to 2025, and Alex Bowman is almost officially mathematically eliminated. Might as well focus on 2027.
Three months with 13 total races is a long way to go, but nothing we've seen over the first six months and 23 races has indicated that anybody will pose a serious threat to the one team that has been consistently the team to beat all year.
Even when they haven't won, they've done more than enough so that when they have won, they've capitalized more than anybody and moved right on up the standings, leaving everyone else in their wake.
And it seems like they just keep getting faster.
Richmond Raceway is scheduled to host the antepenultimate race of the 2026 NASCAR Cup Series season this Saturday, August 15, with live coverage of the Cook Out 400 set to be provided by USA Network beginning at 7:00 p.m. ET. Start a free trial of FuboTV now and catch all of the action!
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