Denny Hamlin would have ended stage one in Las Vegas with seven points. Instead, he wanted to make it eight and attempted to chase down Ryan Blaney in third, before a spin with three laps to go sent the No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota rolling down the track and out of stage points. Hamlin managed to save his car before it hit the inside wall, but from there on the JGR veteran’s race was all about damage control. 

Hamlin came into Vegas as the winner of the two previous races at the track. He even started on pole and led 39 laps, the second most on the day during the 267-lap race. Based on that start and having that pace, with all of his experience, Hamlin would have known better than to push for an extra point so early in the race. Yet that detrimental mistake saw him finish 16th on the back of a 3rd-place finish at Kansas that was supposed to build his momentum after a rough start to the Chase.

“Not smooth, you know, definitely not smooth,” Hamlin told the media, including Bob Pockrass. “And we haven’t had any catastrophe days. But we’ve certainly had our fair share of not performing today, obviously leaving a bazillion points on the table. Considering where we were on the speed before the wreck.”

Hamlin knows this is a missed opportunity. Vegas was the second of three consecutive mile-and-a-half tracks where JGR and Toyota were supposed to be dominant. And it was the No. 19 JGR Toyota of Chase Briscoe who would go on to win every stage and the race, picking up 75 points. Briscoe’s day was what Hamlin was hoping for, but it wasn’t to be. 

There is a feeling that the championship is now starting to slip from under Hamlin. The veteran driver would have wished that was because other drivers were performing better than him, but in Vegas, it was all down to him fighting for one extra point. That one move ended up leaving him with damage, and he never found the confidence to get his car into the top ten again. 

“Just trying to make up the track position that we lost, and you trying to push to get her back,” Hamlin described the stage one spin. “And evidently there’s marbles or something up there. It was quite odd, but I went up there to try to get a run, and yeah, just spun out and obviously damaged the car.”

The damage to Hamlin’s car affected its performance, and from then on, it became difficult for the JGR driver to match the speed of the front runners while attempting to race through the pack. 

“I tried to make up all the positions we could,” Hamlin said, “But this car was very bad. Once I spun, I probably knocked the splitter up. The bottom of the car is drug off, and as we know, when you drive the bottom of the car off, you got no downforce.”

And when it couldn’t get worse, it did. On Lap 170, Hamlin reported an issue with the fuel pressure on pump one, so his team switched him to pump two, but that cost the JGR driver 12 spots on a restart, cancelling whatever progress he had made before that. 

But Hamlin will feel a sense of relief after it was Briscoe who got the win and not championship leader Kyle Larson, who was chasing down the No. 19 JGR until the Hendrick Motorsports driver made contact with the wall on the last lap. 

Larson saved his car and ended up finishing second. But it wasn’t a straightforward race for the No. 5 HMS driver. His crew had discussed changes they needed to make to the Chevrolet on the night before the race but didn’t implement them. Larson felt a balance issue with the right front being tighter than he wanted it. To make the adjustment, Larson’s crew chief, Cliff Daniels, had the two-time Cup winner pit before anyone else, sending him a lap down. 

Larson ended stage one in 24th but managed to salvage a single point by finishing 10th in stage two. From there, it was an epic charge to the end, but Larson only picked up 36 points. And that is the only respite for Hamlin leaving Vegas. 

Hamlin was 26 points off Larson in the championship. After Vegas, that has increased to 40; however, it’s just 14 points lost to Larson this weekend in comparison to the 25 points lost in Kansas. 

The JGR veteran isn’t as confident with the way the Chase is shaping up for him. He has just three top-ten finishes in five races. His competition, on the other hand, has two wins, two second-place finishes, and a fifth-place finish in Darlington. 

“Not really digesting it, truthfully,” said Hamlin about the championship. “And so you just got to play the ball from where it lies, and where it lies is we got a little gap. We got to make up, so we got to perform at our best.”

With just five races to go, Hamlin definitely needs to make up the ground, and it’s almost certain that his next slip-up could be the last nail in the coffin for his championship dreams.