Kansas Speedway delivered one of the wildest playoff finishes this Sunday. Denny Hamlin looked set to punch his ticket to the Round of 8 after leading 159 laps and sweeping both stages. But a last lap surprise lead by Chase Elliott, who slid past Hamlin while he was fighting with Bubba Wallace, stole both the show and the No. 11’s win. However, at the heart of it was a simple question — Can Hamlin ever separate his JGR driver duties from his 23XI owner hat?

Wallace didn’t hide his frustration when he called Hamlin a “f***ing douche,” and later warned, “How you race me is how I race you.” Fans piled on, too, accusing Hamlin of undercutting his own driver’s playoff hopes at a time when Wallace sat below the cut line. For Hamlin, the criticism felt familiar, playing a dual role of driver-owner for two different teams since 2020. But this time, instead of brushing it off, Hamlin chose to answer directly, revealing exactly where his priorities lie.

Denny Hamlin’s 4-word truth

On his Actions Detrimental podcast, Denny Hamlin set the tone right away. “I’m racing for the win. And I definitely won’t apologize for racing for the win,” he said. To him, the expectation that he should ease off for Wallace misses the point of what Sunday is about.

“On Sunday I am the driver. The person in the 11 car is the driver,” he explained. “That’s where the disconnect comes from. People expect me to be a different person… and that’s just not possible.” In other words, once he straps into the car, he’s not thinking like an owner. He’s thinking like a competitor trying to put Joe Gibbs Racing in victory lane.

Then came the line that summed up his stance. “What’s that say to Joe Gibbs if he’s seeing that? You’re racing for him,” Hamlin said. For all the attention on 23XI, his paycheck and his championship shot come with Gibbs. That’s the loyalty he was defending.

He added that he’d have raced any teammate the same way and argued fans would have ripped him even harder if he’d backed off for Wallace. To Hamlin, keeping the playing field level was the only way to avoid an even louder controversy. But in doing so, he put into sharp focus the awkward truth: his own driver lost momentum while Hamlin doubled down on being Gibbs’ guy.

For now, the Kansas Speedway is behind us. From here on, the road ahead gets even trickier. Wallace is still fighting from 26 points below the cutline. Meanwhile, Denny Hamlin carries a 48-point cushion into the final Round of 12 race at Charlotte. Both still have a path to the Round of 8, but the Kansas finish showed how easily their fates can collide.

Denny Hamlin blames TV deal for NASCAR ratings slump

NASCAR’s playoffs are full of intensity on the track, but off the track, the sport has hit a rough patch. This season’s TV ratings have fallen to massive lows, leaving fans and insiders asking why. While drivers fight for every position and point, NASCAR is grappling with a bigger challenge. They need to keep fans engaged and watching. One of the sport’s most outspoken voices believes he knows exactly why viewers are drifting away.

Denny Hamlin didn’t mince words when discussing the decline. He pointed to the sport’s recent broadcast deals, which have traded network exposure for bigger payouts. “It’s not about what’s going to put us on in the most households,” he explained. Fans are being asked to chase races across multiple networks. That fragmentation has made it harder to stay connected. For Hamlin, the strategy has come at the cost of loyalty and audience consistency.

On his podcast, Hamlin broke it down further. “We’ve always just taken the most amount of money… we were the guinea pigs to get channel X off the ground, channel Y off the ground,” he said. In his view, prioritizing cash over accessibility has scattered fans and hurt the sport’s visibility. It’s especially tough when NASCAR goes head-to-head with the NFL, which is drawing record-setting ratings every week.

Hamlin said the reality is simple: competing directly with football is a losing battle. “Going head-to-head, it’s just going to be a tough, tough road,” he admitted. For NASCAR, the message is clear. Unless exposure and consistency are balanced with revenue, regaining the national audience it once had will be an uphill climb.