Hamlin’s history is littered with playoff woes. Sunday’s late caution brought back memories of the 2014 season finale at Homestead when two cautions in the last 15 laps doomed Hamlin and led to Kevin Harvick winning the championship.

Denny Hamlin took his seat at the podium in the deadline room at Phoenix Raceway, after another championship got away. “I really don’t have much for emotion right now,” he said.

When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it,” Paulo Coelho famously once wrote in The Alchemist. And for Denny Hamlin, the 2025 NASCAR season felt like living proof of that idea.

NASCAR fans were furious on Sunday after Denny Hamlin lost the Cup Series championship to Kyle Larson on what they felt was an unfair circumstance. Hamlin