23XI Racing was quite different last year, but come the 2026 season, they have been delivering dominant performances. Co-owner Denny Hamlin couldn’t help but express his happiness over the changed course. And while there’s a lot that goes into setting up a car for a particular track, one might think that having an experienced team owner driving for a separate operation would benefit 23XI. However, that is not the case.

“It’s like very gratifying that, man, we’ve hired the right people. We’ve got the right people in the right minds working on these cars, and clearly they weren’t influenced by what JGR got, right?” he said on the Actions Detrimental podcast.

The 23XI Racing team owner, Denny Hamlin, won the race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Now it would have been rather simple for the small team at 23XI to just copy the race setup from his #11 car and run at Darlington. But they chose not to. And the most important part? They won the race, marking Tyler Reddick’s fourth race win in the season’s first six races.

“To me, it’s proud because it’s very easy to just, ‘Well, the #11 car’s had success at Richmond, we’re just going to put in his setup, and we’ll figure out how to drive it, and we’ll fine-tune it for ourselves.’ It’s when you have to come up with the answer yourself from the very from scratch. That’s like, ‘Wow, this team is really taking the next step,’” Hamlin added.

And for a team in just its sixth year of operation, that makes it all the more impressive. But hey, credit where it’s due! Ever since the team was founded in 2020, Michael Jordan hasn’t been shy about investing large amounts of capital to support its growth. The team invested $35 million in a 114,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art headquarters known as Airspeed, which opened in 2024.

Further, Denny Hamlin has spent too much time and resources building 23XI Racing from scratch while focusing on his own racing as well. And it has paid off. Reddick changed NASCAR history this year after winning the opening three rounds of the Cup championship and has continued to perform well.

Meanwhile, Bubba Wallace also has four top-10s to his name while leading 86 laps. So, clearly, the team has been working hard and in the right direction. And if NASCAR analyst Jordan Bianchi is to be believed, then 23XI Racing now deserves to be mentioned alongside the Big Three.

On The Teardown podcast released March 17, the analyst pointed out how Toyota teams have started the year with strong results across several types of tracks. They have won four of the first five races of the season.

For Hamlin, this team is not just a summer project, but something to look after throughout his career, even when he’s done with full-time racing. In fact, some of his aspirations exceed his own performance with Joe Gibbs Racing.

Denny Hamlin’s aspirations with 23XI Racing

After Tyler Reddick’s Daytona 500 victory this year, the team celebrated, and even days later, Denny Hamlin still seemed in high spirits. It was during this time that he made some bold claims about the team.

“We just felt like we were the next team. Like the next, we’re the next elite team. We’re done with that,” he said. “We’re trying to infiltrate that, the old guard that is taking over the sport over the last few decades from their commitment, obviously, their heritage of knowing their winning pedigree.”

His goal is straightforward: defeat the Big Three.

Hendrick Motorsports, Joe Gibbs Racing, and Team Penske have dominated the sport for decades now. While there have been other successful teams, the Big Three have managed to shadow them with their immense crew and extremely dominant cars.

“They’ve got the best people, great drivers. It’s hard, really, really hard to overtake those guys, but we want to be one of the teams that can challenge that weekend week out. We don’t want to go to the racetrack thinking, well, our expectation should be 10 to 12 because surely all the Gibbs and Hendrick and Penske cars are going to be one through 10 on speed,” he added.

Now, this is certainly not an easy task, and with Denny Hamlin already hinting at retirement, he would have the opportunity to dedicate his full attention to 23XI Racing and its operations in the future, becoming the guiding presence the team needs.