Denny Hamlin isn’t chasing mediocrity heading into the Chase. He locked himself into the No. 1 spot with one regular-season race to spare and is looking to win his first-ever Cup Series championship. Of course, all the races on the postseason schedule are important, but there’s one particular venue that Hamlin has marked in red on his calendar. And surprisingly, it’s where he’s statistically the most dominant among active drivers in the sport today.

With five victories, no other Cup Series driver today has more victories at Darlington. David Pearson (10), Dale Earnhardt (9), and Jeff Gordon (7) are the only ones in front of Hamlin on the list. But the Joe Gibbs Racing driver feels that he’s not been at his best at this iconic superspeedway in the last two races. He declared in Daytona on 29th August that he’s trying to change that.

“I mean, I think it starts with Darlington. That’s a track where I’ve not been my best over the last couple of races there, so I’m trying to get the performance back where we expect to be at that racetrack. So that’s the number one focus for me at the moment,” the No. 11 driver said in a presser before the Coke Zero Sugar 400.

The question posed to Hamlin was which races he’s confident of winning once the Chase begins. He boldly stated “all of them”, which showcases a driver sure of the momentum he carries over from the regular season. But he’s also aware that if he performs the way he did in his last two outings at Darlington, he’ll start on the back foot.

Hamlin actually won the first race in Darlington last year, the Goodyear 400, leading only 10 laps to book his trip to Victory Lane. But it was the Cook Out Southern 500 in the Fall that began this self-described ‘slump’ on one of his strongest tracks.

Starting from the pole, Denny Hamlin looked like the car to beat early after winning Stage 1 of the 2025 playoff opener. The race quickly got away from him, though, as aero issues in dirty air and even tire wear took away his strategic advantage. Hamlin fell all the way to 25th while Chase Briscoe pulled away from the field, leading 309 laps on his way to the win. Despite a great recovery drive to climb back to seventh, Hamlin left Darlington wondering what could have been.

At this year’s Goodyear 400, he finished even worse. Hamlin had a strong car and was running fourth in Stage 2, but a misjudgment from the No. 11 driver cost him several positions. He thought he had a flat tire or that something was broken on his car, so he pitted. His crew confirmed after he stopped that there was no issue, but the damage to his track position was already done. Caught in traffic, Hamlin could only recover to 11th by the end.

Hamlin will hold a 25-point advantage over the second-placed driver when the Chase begins, with the top 16 drivers receiving a points reset. His advantage over the third-placed driver will be 35 points, after which the gaps drop to five points between each driver.

If Hamlin has a poor start to the Chase with another difficult Darlington performance, similar to the last two, he would give up a significant part of that advantage heading into the next nine races. And that’s why, although he’s confident of winning everything, what matters most to him right now is a strong Cook Out Southern 500 on September 6.

Denny Hamlin feels that the Chase has the perfect tracks suited to him

After Darlington, the Chase heads to Madison, Bristol, Kansas, Las Vegas, Charlotte, Phoenix, Talladega, Martinsville, and Homestead-Miami. It’s a promising stretch for the 45-year-old veteran, who has admitted in previous interviews that, as far as he’s concerned, the schedule couldn’t be much better.

“You can’t always control all the variables, but I would say, you know, if I had to draw a schedule, it’d be as good as it could get for us,” he said ahead of the Dollar Tree 301 in New Hampshire last weekend. However, he also singled out two tracks that stand out for him.

Martinsville, where Hamlin has won six Cup Series races, is one of them. It’s been on the postseason schedule for more than 20 years, and Hamlin insisted that he will put particular focus on making sure he wins there. The other track he spoke about was Homestead-Miami, which returns to host the finale for the first time since 2019. Hamlin has won there three times, making him the most successful driver at the track, tied with legends Greg Biffle and Tony Stewart.

For Hamlin, it all comes down to getting the Chase off to a strong start. Darlington has exposed some problems in his recent form, but the rest of the playoff schedule gives him plenty of chances to make up for it. With the No. 1 seed, a strong regular season behind him, and some of his best tracks still ahead, Hamlin has every reason to be confident. Now, he just needs Darlington to be the start of the championship run he has been chasing for years.