Remember the last time Joe Gibbs won a championship? It was back in 2019 when Kyle Busch won the finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway, beating teammate Martin Truex Jr. by a 4.578-second margin. While that may have capped off Busch’s best season before which he spiraled into a winless streak, it also marked JGR’s last title. And it was six years ago – a fact that dug into Denny Hamlin’s conscience during the latest Cup Series playoff race.

NASCAR visited New Hampshire Motor Speedway as the Round of 12 playoff opener. And most of the attention was on Joe Gibbs Racing, as all three of its playoff drivers had swept the Round of 16. However, the outlier, Ty Gibbs, has neither a playoff spot nor any trophy – yet he made it a point to loudly trumpet his presence. And Hamlin could not stand that.

Denny Hamlin silently seethes under tension

Well, after the previous round’s brilliance, nobody expected tension within the Joe Gibbs fold. Shortly into Stage 2, Ty Gibbs entered a battle for position with his teammates, Denny Hamlin and Christopher Bell. Gibbs did not allow them much room and even made contact with Bell’s car. He radioed to his team that he “won’t take any more crap from” his teammate. This infuriated Hamlin, who asked his team to talk some sense into Gibbs. “This is some teammate bulls—-,” Hamlin said, adding, “Does Ty know we are going for a championship. What the f—?” Then, Hamlin had had enough and spun Gibbs into the outside wall.

After collecting a 12th-place finish, Denny Hamlin looked visibly in a bad mood in the post-race interview. He described the incident: “We made contact in one. It was like the fourth or fifth time we made contact, but eventually it ended up getting spun.” He continued, “I was trying to get by them. That was a task in itself… Yeah, I’ll let leadership kind of quarterback it however they’d like to, but obviously, us and 20, 19 are all trying to win a championship for their family, so it’s crazy unfortunate while we’re racing the way we are.”

Pursuing a championship that has evaded him for two decades has already kept Denny Hamlin tensed. What is more, the No. 11 Toyota driver was recovering from a penalty incurred at Bristol. Yet, this incident is not a surprise. Ty Gibbs has a penchant for being stubborn on the racetrack. He infamously denied teammate Brandon Jones a Championship 4 spot during the 2022 NASCAR Xfinity season when he wrecked him for the trophy. Despite the immense criticism of the young driver, Gibbs didn’t seem to care in his post-race interviews. Similarly, his nonchalant attitude was visible after the latest fiasco, as he said after the race, “We got wrecked there. So, we’ll go see them next week.”

Denny Hamlin’s aggressive move was also not out of the blue. He had been similarly passionate in other New Hampshire races.

Going against fellow veterans

When you are hyper-focused, nothing can come in your way. At ‘The Magic Mile,’ Denny Hamlin has 19 top-10 finishes and three wins. The most recent of those came in 2017, a year when he went up against another teammate, Martin Truex Jr. The latter set the pace for most of the afternoon, but Hamlin eventually led 54 laps to the victory. But his 2007 win was even more spectacular.

On lap 255 of the 2007 iteration of the New Hampshire race, Denny Hamlin took two tires as opposed to his rivals taking four. He seized the lead soon after, with four-time Cup Series champion Jeff Gordon hot on his heels. Yet Hamlin persisted in his run, digging deep and eventually holding off the veteran by 0.068 seconds, less than a car length, to bank his third career win. A NASCAR fan recalled this feat in a recent X post. It read, “The closest margin of victory for a Cup race at New Hampshire was .068 seconds, when Denny Hamlin beat Jeff Gordon in July 2007.”

Denny Hamlin’s passionate drive was evident in his post-race interview. He said back in 2007, “You see Jeff coming and you’re trying your best to not be the guy who chokes at the end. I was all over the track those last two laps. I was basically just trying not to give up the bottom…We were back in sixth and seventh most of the day, and the only shot we had was to get track position. Two tires worked for us earlier (in the race), and we kind of made a note that anything inside of 120 laps to go, we were going to do two.”

Clearly, that drive to get through in New Hampshire still shines in Denny Hamlin. Although it resulted in a nasty encounter with his teammate, let’s hope that it works out for Hamlin in his 2025 pursuit.