Dover takeaways: The big Denny Hamlin question is back, Chase Elliott's rough ending, and Ty vs. Ty

New York Times

6 days ago

DOVER, Del. – Here's a weird one for you: NASCAR is five races away from the playoffs, and the driver who is now the season wins leader after Sunday has barely been mentioned as a championship contender.
Even on Denny Hamlin's own podcast, there hasn't been any title talk. Which is weird, considering Hamlin is the winningest NASCAR driver to never win a championship and, at age 44, this is surely one of his last chances.
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So what gives? Maybe it's exhaustion with that storyline — after all, the 'Is this the year?!' angle has been an annual tradition for Hamlin over the last decade and a half.
Or maybe it's that the wonky playoff format makes the actual champion so hard to predict, so no one bothers to invest too much energy in wondering who it will be this season.
For the record, Hamlin thinks it's the latter.
'We couldn't even make it (past the) 32nd seed in a bracket,' Hamlin said, referencing his loss as the No. 1 seed to Ty Dillon in the first round of NASCAR's in-season tournament. 'It's a tough format. When you shorten your seasons into three races, fricking anything can happen. I try not to just (say), 'Oh, we're going to do it this year.'
'If we do, we do. If we don't, we don't. I care about wins. I want more trophies, more trophies, more trophies. When I'm done, I want to be in the top 10 of all-time winners. That will mean more than any other accomplishment I could have.'
Hamlin now has four of those wins this year — the most he's had in a single season since 2020. He is also tied for the series lead in top-five finishes.
Maybe part of Hamlin being overlooked as a title contender is that those numbers were not expected this season. He lost crew chief Chris Gabehart in the offseason and was paired with Chris Gayle, with whom he barely had any connection. He had the preseason headache of sponsorship woes, the ongoing distraction of a major lawsuit against NASCAR and the juggling of a third child on the way.
Plus, not many drivers have seen sustained success into their mid-40s regardless of their off-track situation.
But there's Hamlin, as fast as ever, getting closer to that stated goal of being among the 10 winningest NASCAR Cup Series drivers of all time. He can match Kevin Harvick for 10th on the list with two more wins; he needs three for sole possession of the top-10 title.
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And yet there's still that championship possibility, which feels like it may never come. Except could this, of all years, somehow be the year?
'Maybe,' Hamlin said.
It's time to at least start asking the question.
If Chase Briscoe wasn't racing against Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Hamlin on the final restart, he said, the outcome of the race could have gone differently.
It was surprising to see Briscoe, on two fresher tires than Hamlin, be unable to make the winning pass despite starting alongside him on the front row for overtime. But Briscoe felt he was limited in how hard he could race a teammate.
'I could have put him in a really, really, really bad air,' Briscoe said. 'I did 50 percent of what I probably could have done because I didn't want to wreck him. But certainly, if it was another car, I could have just opened my hands up and I would have won the race. It had been dirty, but I could have won the race.'
The No. 19 was close, but the No. 11 prevailed in #NASCAROvertime. 💪 pic.twitter.com/oacv4cDbHl
— NASCAR (@NASCAR) July 20, 2025
That said, Briscoe still might not have done it. He's a clean racer, and it's important to him to win the right way — as Shane van Gisbergen observed just last week at Sonoma. Briscoe remembers when he was racing sprint cars at age 13 and made contact with another driver — which resulted in his dad making him march down to the other driver and apologize.
'It's just how I was raised to race,' he said. 'Obviously I've been in incidents at the end of races, but it was just because I was going so hard and messed up. It wasn't like I was trying to intentionally do something wrong. So it's definitely important to me, and hopefully I'll get it back on the other end.'
Chase Elliott fans were incensed by crew chief Alan Gustafson's pit call to take two tires during a caution for rain when there were only six cars on the lead lap and he had just pitted seven laps earlier.
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Gustafson agreed, to a point — but he said the two-tire part of the call was 'not relevant.' Instead, it was just pitting in general that he regretted.
'Obviously, didn't work out,' a visibly frustrated Gustafson told The Athletic after the race. 'Certainly concerned about being first and being the only guy with no tires, and then wanting to have the best tires and the best-positioned left-side tires. I'd like the (call) back, obviously.'
The dilemma for Gustafson and Elliott was they could have taken the front row on older tires, which turned out to be the winning call for Hamlin. On the team radio, they waffled on the call until Gustafson made the late decision to bring Elliott in.
But as it turned out later, even Briscoe — with two fresher tires he took on much later than Elliott's pit stop — still couldn't overcome Hamlin's considerably older tires thanks to Dover's dirty air.
So Elliott, who seemed headed toward a career day (he led 238 laps, his most ever at a non-Martinsville race), finished sixth instead. And that was a bitter outcome for the team, including Gustafson.
'You wanted to be up front,' Gustafson said, speaking about the decision in hindsight. 'You wanted to be leading those guys with tires. None of those guys with tires passed us through that run.'
NASCAR's inaugural In-Season Challenge bracket will end in a Ty.
Ty Gibbs and Ty Dillon, both grandsons of NASCAR Hall of Fame team owners, will face off at Indianapolis in an unlikely matchup for a $1 million prize.
On one end, Gibbs has barely acknowledged or mentioned his matchups until now. He was among the drivers who claimed he didn't know how much the bracket paid and wasn't putting too much emphasis on the tournament.
And that makes sense for someone who drives for JGR. Gibbs is expected to win races, not worry about a bracket that doesn't have any direct impact on the season.
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Dillon and his Kaulig Racing team, though, are all-in. They shared an elated scene around his car on Sunday, fully embracing the underdog role and Dillon's out-of-nowhere run from the No. 32 seed.
'Nobody believes in Ty. Nobody does,' team president Chris Rice told The Athletic just before he gave Dillon an enthusiastic hug. 'When we started this year, I said, 'Make them talk about you.' And he's done that. I'm so proud of him.'
I couldn't even get my words out!! So excited for @tydillon and @KauligRacing! pic.twitter.com/T0Uv8EpYsQ
— Chris Rice (@C_Rice1) July 20, 2025
Indeed, Dillon may be the most overlooked Cup driver, and there hasn't been much for his supporters to lean on. He has twice lost his Cup Series ride, most recently after 2023 when he had a miserable season (with no top-10 finishes) in Spire Motorsports' No. 77 car. Carson Hocevar then took over that car with virtually the same team and performed much better, which made Dillon's struggles look worse.
Dillon then spent most of last year in the Truck Series, where he had just two top-10 finishes in 18 starts.
Then he landed the ride with Kaulig, which is part of an alliance with Richard Childress Racing — owned by Dillon's grandfather. But the results have been better than expected: 10 top-20 finishes this season in a car few thought would do anything.
And though Dillon hasn't been spectacular during this run, he's done enough with four straight top-20s to survive and advance.
He won't be favored to win his matchup at Indianapolis, but he hasn't been favored in any of the others, either.
'Phenomenal,' team owner Matt Kaulig told The Athletic. 'There were 32 teams at the beginning of this thing, and now we're one of two who get to compete for a million dollars next week. Anything can happen in racing, and that's what happened.'
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One of the big talking points coming out of Sonoma was Ty Gibbs' aggressive pit road entry that resulted in contact with a tire carrier from Brad Keselowski's team. The TNT race broadcast originally said Gibbs made an intentional move that should have been penalized after he was nudged out of the way by Keselowski teammate Chris Buescher, but the analysts later backtracked and said Gibbs did nothing wrong. NASCAR agreed, saying there was nothing illegal about Gibbs' pit entry, and he was not penalized.
Gibbs said he largely stays off social media, so he didn't see everything that was said, but was generally aware of the conversation and was caught off guard by the topic having legs until Dover. In his mind, as with NASCAR's, he did nothing inappropriate.
'I can't believe it's still a topic a week later,' he told The Athletic. 'I don't know if that shows you that the racing wasn't great and people need something to talk about or what.'
Gibbs watched that portion of the TNT broadcast and said he was 'surprised at how little they knew about what was going on, who the car was (behind him) and everything.'
'I honestly thought that was very embarrassing,' he said. 'We're live coverage, broadcasting sports, and we don't even know who is in the car or on what team.
'A lot of people didn't even know what was going on, and 98 percent of people didn't know the rule. So it's just a lot of misunderstanding, I think.'
Joey Logano became the youngest driver to reach 600 career starts on Sunday, breaking an old Richard Petty mark, and the 35-year-old acknowledged he's got his eye on one of NASCAR's great milestone achievements: the Iron Man streak.
Jeff Gordon is the current NASCAR Iron Man holder. He never missed a race in his full-time career and made 797 consecutive starts, breaking Ricky Rudd's old record.
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Logano is 200 away from Gordon now; though he has 600 total, Logano is at 597 consecutive starts because he ran three Cup races before his full-time career began in 2009.
It would take Logano five and a half more seasons of Cup racing — putting him at age 41 — to break Gordon's record. So we had to ask: Is getting the Iron Man streak on his mind?
'It's a thought because I can get it, and I'm probably the only one who can get it,' he said. 'With that said, is my career not made if I don't have that? It doesn't change anything.
'Will it go into my decision whether I'm going to continue or not? Probably. It's one piece that would be part of the equation I would be trying to figure out.'
It might be surprising to hear Logano say he might not continue to age 41, but the guy has already had a longer career than many drivers do, given how early he started. At some point, if he's not as fast, Logano said he's not interested in hanging on just for the sake of doing so.
But if he's winning, he could go well past 800 consecutive starts.
'As long as I can compete up front and for wins and put my team in championship positions, I don't see why I'd stop at that point, unless something drastically changes in home life or something like that,' he said. 'But at the moment, everything's kind of going as planned, so you keep rolling.'
As far as the overall starts record? That is untouchable. Petty's 1,184 starts are 584 more — or 16 seasons worth — than Logano. But that's because Petty competed before the Modern Era with the standardized NASCAR schedule and had some years when he ran more than 50 races (even making 61 starts in 1964).
Either way, by the time Logano reaches the Iron Man streak timeframe, he will represent the last remaining bridge to an era of drivers that included the likes of Gordon and Mark Martin. His peers like Hamlin, Brad Keselowski and Kyle Busch will likely all be retired, leaving Logano as the final link to mid-2000s NASCAR fandom.
'Maybe they won't boo me anymore by then,' Logano said.
Josh Berry said he reached out to Hocevar last week after spinning the No. 77 car at Sonoma. But Hocevar never returned his attempts to communicate, and the drivers never spoke.
'A complete mistake on my part,' Berry said of the incident. 'I tried calling Carson on Monday and sent him a text, but never heard anything back.'
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We asked Hocevar why that was the case — was he mad? Plotting revenge? Didn't care? — but Hocevar said it's because similar conversations are pointless. And when the situations are reversed, 'I don't want to have to make those calls either.'
'The whole thing about calling someone is dumb,' Hocevar said. 'It's not going to change anything. So there's nothing to talk about.'
Ryan Preece returned to his home track of Stafford Speedway in Connecticut this week to race — and win — the New England 900, a 90-lap race of Crown Victorias organized by the YouTube sensation Cleetus McFarland.
Preece said the atmosphere for the entertainment-focused race was among the best of any he'd been to, perhaps second only to the Daytona 500.
'It can be lost in the shuffle of everything we have going on in the competition side: We're here to entertain,' Preece said. 'During the race, I had the radio going, I was pressing the nitrous button, I had the air horns going. It was a blast.
'It's a different product, but it was fun to be a part of. Those guys know how to orchestrate an event. They know how to keep it moving. There really wasn't any downtime. And from what I saw, all the fans loved it.'
(Top photo of Denny Hamlin celebrating Sunday's win: Meg Oliphant / Getty Images)