Ty Gibbs had the fastest car at Sonoma. He started from pole, led 31 laps, and was certainly the guy to beat all afternoon. However, he finished third. And it was his own team that made sure of it. On Actions Detrimental, teammate Denny Hamlin tried to make sense of it.

“It’s definitely difficult when you know you have race-winning speed to just take the points,” Denny Hamlin said. “I get both sides. I definitely understand the team’s decision, but I also understand Ty’s feeling of, ‘Hey, give me a shot at him. I can beat him.'”

It all started when NASCAR changed everything in January. The old playoff system is gone. It’s no more win-and-you’re-in. They brought back the Chase format, where the top 16 in points after Race 26 make the postseason, and where you finish in the regular season determines your starting advantage going in. That rule change has rewired the strategy for a lot of teams every Sunday.

At Sonoma, crew chief Tyler Allen did the math and played it safe for Gibbs. Rather than pitting early to flip the field for restarts, which would have put Gibbs up front for a clean shot at the win, they kept him out through both stage breaks.

He swept the stages, pocketed 20 points, pitted, fell deep in the pack, then drove back through traffic to third. Final haul: 54 points. Second best in the whole field behind Shane van Gisbergen. It worked on paper. Gibbs passed Kyle Larson in the standings, moved to fourth overall, and is now 188 points clear of the Chase bubble. And he is not losing sleep about making the postseason.

But Denny Hamlin is not letting the other side of it go either.

“The 54 ran those guys down from quite a ways back,” he said. “Every time they didn’t flip the stages, he was restarting somewhere in the teens.”

He also pointed out that when you look at the actual lap times, the No. 54 was probably the car most capable of running SVG down, not Chase Briscoe’s No. 19, who was the one that actually got close at the end.

Here is the problem with the strategy. A win in 2026 pays 55 base points. Third place paid 34. Throw in some stage points on top of a win, and Gibbs could have been looking at 65-plus for the day instead of 54. JGR gave up points to protect points. That is the tension. Hamlin got it, but he did not pretend it was a clean call.

“They’re in a unique spot because, to date, nobody has really outrun Shane,” he said. “So you’re just going to make the assumption that you’re going to be the first? Well, Ty is probably one of the best candidates to actually do it.”

A Wreck, a Verdict, and a One-Point Lead ft. Denny Hamlin

Hamlin’s own day at Sonoma went sideways fast. Lap 64, Turn 7, restart. Bowman tagged Keselowski. Keselowski went into Carson Hocevar. Hocevar came back into the rear of Hamlin’s No. 11. The whole thing took about two seconds. Hamlin spun into the dirt and dropped to last.

The front splitter took damage, his handling was gone, and he dug back to the 26th. Not the day he needed.
Except it somehow still worked out. Tyler Reddick’s power steering failed, and he finished dead last. Denny Hamlin left Sonoma leading the championship by exactly one point, 719 to 718.

During the week, once Hamlin watched the on-board footage from Bowman’s car, the picture got clearer. Carson Hocevar did not hook him. He was just the last car in a chain reaction, carried forward by what happened behind him. Hamlin said so on the podcast,

“I think that it’s always very easy to blame the car directly behind you, and yes, Carson could have done a better job”

One point up. A teammate who maybe should have won. Sonoma handed JGR a complicated week either way.