DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Denny Hamlin knew it wasn’t good when he walked into a conference room and saw only his crew chief, Chris Gabehart; team owner Joe Gibbs; and top executives from Toyota Racing Development.
The Toyota officials were there to deliver bad news: In a colossal mistake, the manufacturer took a race-winning engine from Hamlin’s victory earlier this year at Bristol Motor Speedway and tore it apart before submitting it to NASCAR for inspection. Such a move — rebuilding an engine before NASCAR inspects it — is an automatic L2 penalty in the NASCAR rule book, and NASCAR smacked Hamlin’s team with a heavy points penalty Thursday as a result.
Wiped away were 10 playoff points — the equivalent of two Cup Series race wins — and 75 regular-season points, which was enough to eliminate Hamlin from winning the regular-season championship.
A glum Hamlin faced reporters Friday at Daytona International Speedway and spoke about the gut punch this week has been for him after seeing his playoff point total cut from 21 to 11.
“It’s like, ‘Damn it,’” Hamlin said. “This format rewards regular-season excellence, and it allows you to have a not-perfect day and still be able to race for a championship (if a driver has enough points). Now I’m back there in the middle where I’m very vulnerable in some spots.”
In the NASCAR Cup Series, drivers accumulate “playoff points” via race wins (5 points) and mid-race stage wins (1 point) during the 26-race regular season. They also can get extra playoff points based on where they finish in the top 10 of the regular-season standings, with the leader getting 15 more points (the equivalent of three race wins).
Until Thursday, Hamlin had ranked third in the series in playoff points and was in contention to win the regular-season title. Now that’s been washed away, and the winningest driver to never win a Cup championship suddenly finds himself staring at a steep mountain to climb for his first title.
Instead of entering each of the three playoff rounds with a points advantage over the competition, the 43-year-old Hamlin will likely have to win several times to advance to the championship race. His mulligan, so to speak, has been erased.
“Obviously, our room for error is gone now, and we just hope to get through the rounds,” he said.
Hamlin has said in the past that he feels “cursed” because his championship hopes have been thwarted multiple times by some of the most random, bizarre occurrences in recent NASCAR history. Ross Chastain’s famous “Hail Melon” move knocked Hamlin out of the title race in 2022, for example. Last year, Hamlin was sailing toward a championship race berth until his power steering belt suddenly malfunctioned in the middle of a corner at Homestead-Miami Speedway during the semifinal playoff round. In 2015, a broken roof hatch eliminated him from the playoffs at Talladega Superspeedway. But this mistake by Toyota, which had nothing to do with Hamlin or his Joe Gibbs Racing team, “definitely tops” the list of strange setbacks, he said.
“Should I be surprised (it happened to him)? I don’t think so,” Hamlin said. “It’s hard to not feel and be negative in the moment, and I am in the moment. I feel negative about it. Not about the decision, just about our season and potentially what it could or couldn’t do (to his title hopes).”
Hamlin did not quibble with NASCAR’s penalty ruling and said officials “did what was right.” Officials followed what the rule book lists for such situations, even if it was Toyota’s fault and not an error committed by Hamlin or Gabehart (who was also fined $100,000). Toyota insisted the engine was legal but said an oversight led to the engine being disassembled before it had gone through the proper protocols with NASCAR.
“TRD takes full responsibility for this grievous mistake, and we apologize to Denny, Chris, coach Gibbs, the entire JGR organization, NASCAR and our fans,” TRD president David Wilson said in a statement.
Other drivers in contention for the regular-season championship, including some of Hamlin’s top competitors, expressed sympathy for Hamlin’s position.
As Hendrick Motorsports driver Chase Elliott noted, Bristol was the one race this season where the engine mattered the least — “Safe to say they didn’t need the motor that day,” he said.
“I hate that because I want to race Denny,” Elliott said. “I want him to be amongst that group because they do a really good job. Anytime you can go head-to-head with them and outdo a team of that caliber, it’s a good thing and it’s healthy.”
Kyle Larson, perhaps Hamlin’s biggest on-track rival these days, made similar comments.
“You guys might think I’ve been happy he got a penalty, but no,” Larson said. “I was bummed to see that because it’s a huge penalty. … You want everybody to have a fair shot, and at least from what I understand, it wasn’t like they were cheating. It was just a mistake. But a mistake is a mistake, and you have to pay for it.”