Denny Hamlin had the 2025 NASCAR Cup finale in the palm of his hand. He led 208 laps (more than any Championship 4 driver ever), dominated Phoenix, and looked certain to finally grab that first title. But a late caution crushed his dreams. That one yellow flag at the end turned a season of brilliance into heartbreak. Now, across the planet, Supercars champion Broc Feeney has just become the perfect demo of why so many people hate that kind of ending.

Broc’s heartbreak echoes Hamlin’s loss

The race at the bp Adelaide 500 had not even started when on the very first lap, Ryan Wood’s aggressive move clipped the rear of Feeney, spinning him around. It sent him from the pole position to the back of the field, crushing his dreams and his season-long efforts.

His voice cracked post the race, as he said, “That’s the new system they’ve got. You can have a shocker in the last race of the year and it all falls apart… No matter what happened today, the thing was going to break down unfortunately.”

While NASCAR handed its crown to the guy who got lucky with a caution and nailed a restart, Broc Feeney had rolled into the final round of the 2025 Supercars season carrying a points lead built the old-fashioned way. He had a stack of wins, a bunch of poles, and week after week excellence. No points resets, no knockout rounds, no single-race lottery. Just the driver and team who were flat-out best from February until now.

Feeney hasn’t pretended to love every part of Supercars’ new finals-style twist this year, but he’s also made it clear he believes real racing should reward the guy who shows up fastest most weekends, not the one who survives the wildest scramble on the last day.

“I don’t think you’ll be hearing from me for a while, mate. I’ll be flying under the radar for a bit,” he added, making us realize the emotional toll he’s going through.

Every race he wins, clean sweeps, every time he parks it on pole and brings it home up front, he adds another quiet brick to the wall marked “consistency still works.” Every long green-flag run he dominates is another reminder that you don’t need artificial drama when the best car and driver are allowed to prove it over ten months instead of ten laps.

People always argue that playoffs keep the championship alive until the final corner, and yeah, they create wild television. But watch Feeney rack up strong finishes the honest way, and it’s hard not to think the bigger drama is actually the slow-burn story of one team refusing to make mistakes while everyone else tries to chase them down.

Denny Hamlin did everything right for thirty-six races and still walked away empty because one yellow fell at the wrong moment. Feeney’s season is living proof that when you let the points fall where they may, the guy in front at the end almost always deserves to be there.

If Feeney climbs the podium after the last race with the championship in his hands, he won’t just have a trophy and a cool accent. He’ll have the clearest real-world example in years that a title decided over a full season feels fairer, feels heavier, and can still keep every fan on the edge of their seat without turning the finale into a demolition derby or a coin flip.

His whole 2025 run is a calm, steady rejection of the idea that the only way to crown a champion is to throw away ten months of work and let one restart decide everything.

The same weekend the playoff format crushed Denny Hamlin’s dreams, he was already burning hot about something else: the way the press was framing his team’s antitrust lawsuit against NASCAR. The trial starts on Monday, the preview stories have started dropping, and Hamlin read one he thought was pure spin.

Denny Hamlin says fans have been “brainwashed”

Hamlin jumped on social media and unloaded. He accused the ESPN writer Ryan McGee of letting NASCAR’s communications team basically co-author the piece, called it “propaganda,” and said it was full of “continuous lies” about what 23XI and Front Row Motorsports are actually fighting for.

Then he went nuclear: “Our fans have been brainwashed with their talking points for decades. Narratives pushed by the media that are intimidated by them. Lies are over starting Monday morning. It’s time for the truth. It’s time for change.”

To Hamlin, the connection is obvious. The same organization that can snatch a championship away with one poorly timed caution is the same one that owns the tracks, picks the parts suppliers, writes the charter rules, and keeps the lion’s share of the TV money while most teams lose cash every year.

Texts that surfaced in discovery show NASCAR executives bragging about killing Tony Stewart’s SRX series and talking trash about Richard Childress. Hamlin sees ‘monopoly’ written all over it.

The trial is scheduled for three weeks, but everyone knows appeals will probably stretch it out for years. Michael Jordan will be sitting in court every day as 23XI’s official representative.

One weekend, Hamlin watches a random caution steal the title he earned all year. Next, he’s telling the world the entire sport is built to keep teams under the thumb. And halfway around the globe, a kid named Broc Feeney is driving like the perfect answer: stay fast, stay clean, let the season decide.