The radio was telling Denny Hamlin to go after the positions he had lost. He listened, pushed harder and spun his Toyota. Looking back, he can see why the No. 11 team wanted him to attack, but he also knows who was holding the steering wheel. That distinction came up during his latest Actions Detrimental episode, where Hamlin revisited the three races he believes cost him the 2026 NASCAR Cup Series championship.
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“They’re not driving the car. I am,” he said.
That admission came while Hamlin was explaining how pressure from his team influenced his decisions at Las Vegas. He had already lost ground through, and the crew wanted him to fight back. But the spin that followed was his responsibility. It was a distinction he was careful to make, especially when comparing Las Vegas with the contact that ruined his race at Darlington.
Hamlin had entered the Chase as its No. 1 seed, 25 points ahead of the field, after winning four races during the regular season. The new 10-race format gave him no elimination round to blame. Every result carried forward, and the points lost at one track stayed lost at the next.
Darlington was the first warning. Hamlin had a car capable of fighting at the front, but a costly pit stop put him in traffic. Then came contact with Michael McDowell, which damaged the No. 11 Toyota and left Hamlin with an 18th-place finish. He does not believe he caused that incident. Las Vegas, however, is harder for him to put behind him.
Hamlin explained how the team missed an opportunity to keep Kyle Larson a lap down by bringing him to pit road. That decision allowed Larson to return to the lead lap while Hamlin surrendered the track position he had earned. There was still time to recover, but Hamlin’s urgency became another problem. He wanted to make up the lost ground, and the team wanted him to go after it.
“We all know, right, that my Chase boiled down to two pivotal moments,” he said. “Probably, I think in my mind, it was Las Vegas. Well, Darlington. Okay, okay, it’s three. It’s Darlington, it’s Vegas, it’s Phoenix, though. Those are the three tracks where we actually had winning speed. We were fast enough to win those, and those were where we got our worst results. And that is just a non-winning formula, right?”
The spin made an already difficult afternoon worse. His Toyota never regained its earlier competitiveness, and Larson came away with a much better result. Hamlin could question the pit call, but he could not ignore what happened after it.
“I didn’t think I did anything wrong when I got hit by McDowell. I do think I did something wrong when I spun at Vegas,” Hamlin said. “But again, I was put in a tough spot, and then they were whipping the horse, saying, ‘Go, go, go, get him.’ And I’m like, ‘All right, I’m gonna go.’ And so, but that’s still me.”
Phoenix was a different kind of disappointment. Hamlin had been running competitively when a tire failure sent him to pit road. He finished 28th, and there was little he could do to prevent the damage once the tire went down. He could not even establish what caused it.
“And then the Phoenix tire, I mean, I don’t know. Who knows? Is it us? Was it bad luck? I don’t know,” he added.
That uncertainty is important because Hamlin’s season was not simply a case of one driver making poor decisions. The No. 11 team had execution problems, mechanical misfortune and moments when its own strategy worked against it. Martinsville provided another example. Hamlin lost track position after a strategy misstep, then got caught in a spin following contact involving Christopher Bell and Joey Logano.
By Homestead-Miami Speedway, Larson needed less than 10 points to secure the championship. He earned them in Stage 1, becoming a three-time Cup champion before the race was over. Hamlin still had a strong afternoon, winning Stage 2 and leading 87 laps. But he finished sixth, while Ryan Blaney won the race. Hamlin ended the Chase third, 56 points behind Larson.
There is also a deadline attached to this disappointment. Hamlin has identified 2027 as his final season behind the wheel. At 45, he is running out of opportunities to add the Cup championship that has eluded him throughout his career.
He does not need another reminder that bad luck can decide a race. What he seems more concerned about is knowing when his own decisions helped decide one against him.