Denny Hamlin is not pretending the 2026 NASCAR Cup Series championship is still within easy reach. He has accepted that Kyle Larson is on the verge of another title, but his latest comments make clear that the No. 11 team has plenty to answer for after a postseason of missed opportunities.

That was more than a gracious nod to a rival. Hamlin also turned the focus inward, admitting that Joe Gibbs Racing’s No. 11 group had not done enough to stop Larson from building the advantage he now carries into the finale.

For someone who entered the Chase as a leading contender, this was a significant admission. Instead of blaming things on one pit stop or crew member, Hamlin spoke about the No. 11 team as a whole, himself included. He said that the first nine races had not been good enough, and expects to finish somewhere between second and fifth; far from the championship position he wanted.

Martinsville offered a particularly clear example. Hamlin started from the pole but the No. 11 stayed out during the opening stage instead of pitting for fresh tires. The strategy backfired as Ryan Preece, William Byron and Ty Gibbs moved ahead. Hamlin fell through the field and came away without stage points.

Larson had also stayed out and was in even greater trouble, losing a lap and failing to score stage points. For JGR, that was an opening to make a major dent in the championship lead. Instead, Hamlin and Christopher Bell could not convert Larson’s difficult afternoon into a meaningful gain.

Hamlin later described the opening stage as “an absolute killer” and said the team had not capitalised on the speed it brought to the track. A poorly timed caution during the pit-stop cycle and the mid-race incident involving Joey Logano further hurt his recovery. He fought back to sixth, but Larson recovered to ninth, leaving Hamlin with only a three-point gain. Bell finished 10th after a pit-road speeding penalty and a spin following contact with Logano.

The numbers made the missed opportunity even more frustrating. Larson scored only 28 points at Martinsville, his second-lowest total of the Chase, and had no stage points to show for the afternoon. Yet he still left with a 67-point lead over Bell and a 70-point cushion over Hamlin. A perfect race offers 76 points, so the No. 5 driver needs just nine at Homestead-Miami Speedway to clinch the championship.

The criticism extends beyond one race. Jordan Bianchi and Jeff Gluck, discussing the result on Dirty Mo Media, argued that the opportunity to close the gap had been there but neither JGR driver capitalised. They also pointed to a pattern: Larson has had difficult afternoons, including at Phoenix and Martinsville, but Hendrick has repeatedly recovered before those setbacks became championship disasters.

That pattern is particularly striking given where Hamlin’s team stood before the Chase. The No. 11 entered the postseason as the top-seeded car with four wins, yet it has not been able to put together the same kind of clean, winning weekends. Crew chief Chris Gayle acknowledged that a different issue seemed to derail the team each week, making it difficult to reproduce the form it showed during the regular season.

Hamlin’s co-host also asked whether NASCAR should change the points reset because it keeps drivers in contention despite a poor run. Hamlin argued that the No. 11 stayed in the fight through decent finishes, while stage points softened the impact of poor results.

“We still were finishing good,” he said, explaining that even on days when the team finished around 30th, strong stage results gave it some credit. He was not arguing that the format had unfairly kept him in contention. Rather, he acknowledged that the points system rewarded the parts of races the team did get right, even when the full-day result was disappointing.

With Homestead left, Hamlin can still race for the best finish available, but his podcast comments sound more like the beginning of a postmortem than a late championship rally. He has given Larson credit for earning the position he is in and accepted that his own team has not matched that standard when it mattered most.

The No. 11 did not lose its chance in one race. It let too many chances pass across nine. And Hamlin’s admission makes that the part of the Chase he will have to live with long after Larson’s title is settled.

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