AVONDALE, Ariz. — Kyle Larson knew he wasn’t going to catch Denny Hamlin in the final laps of Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series season finale at Phoenix Raceway. Or at least not without the sort of help that only a yellow flag can bring.
Larson got his lucky break.
Hamlin got only heartbreak.
Larson, 33, is now a two-time Cup Series champion after denying Hamlin what would have been his first such title when a late caution sent the championship-deciding race into overtime and a green-white-checkered finish.
Without that caution, which came with three laps to run in regulation, Hamlin had it locked up and was ready to finally shed the label of greatest Cup Series driver to never win the championship. But fellow title contender William Byron — one of Larson’s Hendrick Motorsports teammates — got a flat tire, and his No. 24 Chevrolet hit the wall to bring out the caution.
A few minutes later, it was over.
“Just unbelievable,” Larson said. “I cannot believe it.”
Neither could Hamlin.
“I really don’t have much for emotion right now. Just numb about it … just in shock,” the 44-year-old Joe Gibbs Racing driver said after consoling his crying daughters on pit road. “We were 40 seconds away from a championship. This sport can drive you absolutely crazy because sometimes speed, talent, none of that matters.”
When the caution for Byron came out, Hamlin led the field down pit road and got four new tires on his No. 11 Toyota; Larson took only two tires on his No. 5 Chevrolet. The result was that Larson started fifth for the two-lap sprint to the finish, with Hamlin back in 10th.
With so little time to run down Larson, Hamlin came up short with a sixth-place finish as Larson finished third. Ryan Blaney, the 2023 Cup Series champ who was eliminated from title contention last week when the field of playoff drivers was cut from eight to four, won the race in his Team Penske No. 12 Ford.
“You do have to feel for that group and Denny. Doing a good job all day, it not playing out for him. But that is racing. It sucks sometimes,” Blaney said. “They can hang their head about it, but they should be very proud about the effort. They had the fastest race car here. Just one of those things where it doesn’t work out. Looked like it was going into his favor; unfortunately for him, it didn’t.”
Brad Keselowski was second across the finish line in an RFK Racing Ford, with Larson ahead of Team Penske’s Joey Logano and fifth-place Kyle Busch in a Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet. Hamlin had the highest finish in the race for a Toyota driver as the only one in the top 10.
JGR’s Chase Briscoe, the fourth driver who was eligible for the title entering Sunday, finished 18th in the race, while Byron was 33rd in the 38-car field. Briscoe, 30, and Byron, 27, have never won the title.
Larson’s first Cup Series came in 2021, which was his first season driving for team owner Rick Hendrick after previously racing for Chip Ganassi. His second is the 15th for the organization and came on the 30th anniversary of Jeff Gordon giving Hendrick Motorsports its first in 1995.
As Larson celebrated, Hamlin sat in his car motionless for several seconds, then wiped his face with a white towel, never showing any emotion.
Larson, who won three races earlier in the season but has been in a slump since his disastrous Memorial Day attempt to race both the Indianapolis 500 and Coca-Cola 600 on the same day, was also in shock.
“We didn’t lead a lap and won the championship,” Larson said. “We had an average car at best and had the right front (tire) go down, lost a lap and got the wave around, saved by the caution with the wave around. It’s just unbelievable. What a year by this motorsports team.”
Hendrick, Gordon — now the vice chairman for the organization — and Larson crew chief Cliff Daniels all said they did not believe Larson still had a chance at the championship after so many problems during the race.
“I have to acknowledge that it was a pretty ugly day for us,” Daniels said. “I think we were beat on raw pace, and after we had the flat tire, there wasn’t a lot of good things coming our way. The way the team stuck together and continued to believe in each other, Kyle continued to believe if we just had a shot, we could close it out.”
When Hamlin finally got out of his car, he embraced his crew members, but it was a scene of disbelief among the JGR crowd. Team members were crying, some sitting in shock on the pavement, and Gibbs himself stood silent, one hand on his hip and a look of disbelief on the face of the NASCAR Hall of Fame team owner.
It’s the sixth time in his 20 years driving for JGR that a title chance in the season finale slipped away from Hamlin, who led 208 of the 319 laps Sunday after starting in pole position.
“Nothing I could do different. I mean, prepared as good as I could coming into the weekend and my team gave me a fantastic car,” said Hamlin, who led the series with six wins in points races this year. “Just didn’t work out. I was just praying (for) no caution, and we had one there. What can you do? It’s just not meant to be.”
He said crew chief Chris Gayle made the correct call by changing all four tires on the pit stop just before overtime, but too many others only took two, which created too big of a gap for Hamlin to close on Larson in so little time.
Hamlin had seemed extremely jinxed in five previous times as a contender in the finale, with bad luck, bad strategy and bad cars breaking his heart in 2010, 2014, 2019, 2020 and 2021. Sunday marked his first time as one of the final four contenders in four years.
Hamlin was remarkably loose and calm all week, rented three houses in Scottsdale for 30 friends and family, won the pole and then dominated Sunday’s race.
He was the sympathetic favorite for neutral fans, the betting favorite for oddsmakers, and the guy most in the industry were pulling for — largely based on how much heartbreak he has faced. Hamlin burst onto the NASCAR scene in 2006, winning rookie of the year and finishing third in the championship standings.
On many levels, that promise has been fulfilled with 60 Cup Series victories, three of them Daytona 500 wins. On the championship level, it still has not.
He had a 15-point lead over Jimmie Johnson going into the 2010 finale but was in a terrible mental space, struggled the entire weekend and spun in that race. Johnson wound up winning his fifth straight title, and Hamlin settled for second.
He had a bad pit stop in 2014, his car overheated because the team put too much tape on the front grille in 2019, and a caution late in the 2021 finale doomed his chances that year. Ross Chastain’s infamous wall ride at Martinsville Speedway 2022 bumped Hamlin from making the final four by mere inches at the finish line, and now this.
“Man, if you can’t win that one, I don’t know which one you can win,” Hamlin said of his latest defeat.
Larson was OK during the race, but his slump without a race win now stands at 24 in a row.
Meanwhile, his teammate Byron felt awful for his wreck ruining Hamlin’s chance even though a Hendrick driver won the title.
“I’m just super bummed that it was a caution, obviously. I hate that. Hate it for Denny. I hate it for the 11 team,” Byron said. “I mean, Denny was on his way to it. I hate that. There’s a lot of respect there. I obviously do not want to cause a caution. If I had known what tire it was, known that a tire was going down before I got to the corner, I would have done something different.”
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