Seven years have passed since NASCAR was in Chicagoland. Most teams are essentially starting over on setup only. Joe Gibbs Racing is not. Denny Hamlin was one of three drivers at the spring Goodyear tire test there, giving JGR actual Next Gen data while everyone else ran simulations.

Toyota has also won 11 of 18 races this season. On paper, it looks like a perfect storm, but Chris Buescher is not so sure that the advantage is as big as it sounds. Buescher has raced at Chicagoland plenty of times in different series. That did not make much of a difference when he went back out there.

“I’ve been here a lot through the years, and that being said, going out there in this car after that long felt like the first time,” Buescher said. “I knew the bump into Turn 1 was big. I knew the roughness in Turns 3 and 4 was going to be there, but I’m still figuring out where it’s all at and what this car does with it.”

That tracks with what Denny Hamlin himself said after the test. Even the drivers who got track time only held the edge for so long.

“Denny pointed out that the cars that did the test, you would think they’d have a big advantage, and they may have for about five laps,” Buescher said. “But ultimately, stuff changes really quickly, and everybody gets it figured out rather quickly.”

Five drivers in the field have zero starts at Chicagoland in any series. That is less of a problem than it looks.

The bigger JGR storyline this weekend is Christopher Bell. Six weeks ago, he broke his left wrist at Michigan in a 63-G crash. Chase Elliott collected him on Lap 148. The impact led to his hand slamming into the steering wheel. X-rays found a clean break, no displaced fragments, no surgery needed. A typical recovery takes six weeks, yet Bell was back the very next race.

At Pocono, he raced on a fresh fracture. In San Diego, the cast posed an issue mid-race due to the strain. Brent Crews stepped in as a relief driver after the first caution. At Sonoma, Bell ran the whole thing himself and finished fifth. A notable turnaround, but nobody who knows him was shocked.

“That’s a heck of a hit, but we’re all real stubborn, and no one likes to see anybody else drive their race car,” Buescher said. “I don’t think I had any doubts he’d be back in it.”

At Chicagoland, on an oval, the wrist is no longer the story.

From suing NASCAR to helping run it, Denny Hamlin

There is a bigger picture worth understanding around JGR and where Hamlin sits right now in the sport. In late 2024, Denny Hamlin’s 23XI Racing, co-owned with Michael Jordan, sued NASCAR. The charge was anticompetitive behavior, with Hamlin calling NASCAR management “monopolistic bullies.”

The case went to trial and was settled on day nine. Teams walked away with permanent charters, a cut of intellectual property revenue, international revenue sharing, and real input into how the sport is run.

That last part is most important. Hamlin now sits on NASCAR’s competition committee, working alongside Chad Knaus from Hendrick Motorsports, Wally Brown from JGR, and Travis Geisler from Team Penske. The group is currently designing the next superspeedway rules package.

Denny Hamlin has said NASCAR has delivered on every promise made in the settlement. The tone has completely flipped. A year ago, he was filing federal lawsuits. Now he is in the room where the rules get written. For a co-owner whose team is leading the championship standings, that is a serious amount of leverage.