Denny Hamlin has said several times in recent years that if he had to choose between reaching 60 career Cup wins or finally winning his first career Cup championship, he’d choose 60 wins every time. Sunday at Dover Motor Speedway, Hamlin moved one step closer to that magical number of 60, earning a season-leading fourth win in 2025 and the 58th of his career.
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The oldest active full-time driver in the Cup Series at 44 years old, Hamlin admitted he had to win Sunday “the hard way”, overcoming a rain delay and then holding off Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Chase Briscoe in double overtime to take the checkered flag by 0.310 seconds.
Given that there are still 15 races remaining this season (five in the regular season plus 10 in the playoffs), the No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing driver might not only hit 60 by the end of this season, but what better way to cap that off than by also winning his first Cup title?
“Yeah, it was tough,” Hamlin said about his path to victory. “Those guys gave me a run for it, no doubt about it. But this whole Progressive Toyota team just did an amazing job.”
It was Hamlin’s third career win at the one-mile Monster Mile, and his second in a row, having won there last year. Hamlin has had a love-hate relationship with Dover over his career. He absolutely hated the place in the first half of his Cup tenure.
But he started turning things around with a fifth-place finish in 2014 and just kept getting better and better, eventually finding victory lane here for the first time in 2020.
“Winning here in Dover is super special to me,” Hamlin said. “This is a place that I’ve not been very good at for the first half of my career. And then to have back-to-back (wins) here over the last few years is amazing.”
Hamlin’s Dover transition was learning from other drivers’ success there
The turning point of Hamlin’s career on the only all-concrete mile track in the Cup ranks was essentially going back to school: studying drivers who did well in their own careers at Dover and making mental notes that he applied to his own future efforts there.
“I just studied some of the greats here,” Hamlin said. “I was very fortunate to have Martin Truex (Jr.) as a teammate. Jimmie Johnson, watching him win 10 times here. You learn from the greats and you change your game to match it and you have success like this.”
Hamlin is enjoying his most successful season since 2020 and 2019, when he won seven and six times, respectively. His most successful season ever was 2010, when he won eight races and finished second in the championship chase, the highest finish of his Cup career.
Given the fact Hamlin has now averaged one win in just over every five starts this season, if he can continue that blistering pace in the remaining 15 races, don’t be surprised if he wins two or three more races by season’s end. And maybe finally earn that elusive first Cup Series crown.
You don’t have to sell Hamlin on what’s still potentially possible. “We’ve got a lot left,” he said with a big smile on his face. Or perhaps a better way for him to say it is, “The best is yet to come!”
