By Neha Dwivedi, Staff Writer
It was Denny Hamlin’s season but Kyle Larson’s day to seize at Phoenix Raceway. After months of near-perfection from the Joe Gibbs Racing star, fate twisted its knife in the final laps, turning a near-certain championship into heartbreak.
Kyle Larson, who hadn’t won since Kansas in May and didn’t lead a single lap of the season finale, found himself in the right place at the right time, capitalizing on chaos and bagging his second NASCAR Cup Series title.
All weekend, the warning signs about tires were there. Tire trouble plagued the field from practice through the finale, and by race day, the rubber roulette reached its boiling point. For Hamlin, who entered Phoenix riding the momentum of his Las Vegas win three weeks prior, it all happened in the blink of an eye. A late caution, a big gamble on pit strategy, and one fateful call from the No. 11 pit box tilted the balance toward Larson, who turned the opportunity into gold.
Larson crossed the line third in Sunday’s thriller, behind race-winner Ryan Blaney and runner-up Brad Keselowski, but the bigger prize was his. While Blaney earned his fourth win of the season after a two-lap shootout, it was Larson who left Arizona with the Bill France Cup, capping a season.
Hamlin had dominated much of the 312-lap contest, his #11 Toyota Camry slicing through traffic. But with three laps to go, the race took a turn. Running eighth, Larson clawed back from seventeenth as teammate William Byron’s right-front tire exploded in Turn 3, slamming the wall and triggering the late caution that flipped the championship trajectory.
Then on pit road, Hamlin and his crew tried to play it safe with four fresh Goodyears, while Larson’s team rolled the dice with just two. The difference was monumental as the #5 driver restarted ahead, clung to the high line for clean air, and held off Hamlin’s charge to secure the title, as the No. 11 faded to sixth.
“I thought I was going to line up on the front row with Ryan,” Larson said. “This is going to be good. He can choose the bottom. I know what to expect into one with grip … My hope was that Denny was not going to get a great one and two. I thought with four fresh tires, he might get through there well. We might be side by side. I thought that’s how it would net out off of two. I got a better one and two than I expected. Then yeah, for a bit I thought I was going to win. They were going kind of crazy on the radio; my spotter was telling me that the 11 was kind of jammed up back there. I was going to be committed to the outside lane. I felt like that was going to be my best opportunity to find clean air, maintain momentum. Yeah, was just trying not to crash there at the end… I was trying what I could to win the race. But yeah, we did what we had to do to win the championship.”
But Larson didn’t mince words about Hamlin’s speed either.
“The 11 was by far the best car,” Larson said. “I thought him and the 12 were really good. Out of the four of us the #11 I thought was the best.”
Yet the Hendrick Motorsports driver credited his crew chief, Cliff Daniels, for keeping the ship steady when the seas grew rough. He praised Daniels’ leadership and composure, calling it the backbone of their success as it kept the whole #5 team motivated, always having a plan.
It’s no secret in the garage that Larson and Hamlin are close friends. And the fact that Larson beat out his buddy for the title due to a caution and a pit call, was not lost on him.
“There’s definitely a large piece of me that feels really bad and sad,” Larson told members of the media. “But at the same point, I’m happy. It’s such a weird feeling. When you don’t win the race, you don’t lead a lap, you win the championship, you steal it from a guy who has tried for so long and had it in his fingertips, it’s a really weird feeling.”
In the end, it was two, two-tire calls that even put Larson in the position to take home the championship. Had Daniels given him four tires on either stop, the trophy would likely have gone home with Hamlin.
For Hamlin, the race was another cruel chapter in a story that keeps writing itself in heartbreak. On the final pit stop, he came out 10th after taking four tires with just two laps left in the race. A different call might have made the difference. Could he have held off Larson staying out and holding point or would a two-tire strategy have been enough?
The result was a gut punch for Hamlin, who took quite some time before climbing from his racecar on pit road and into the arms of his fiancée Jordan Fish. Through their embrace, fans could see Denny and Jordan’s tears as she told him she was sorry. It was a heartbreaking scene as his crew chief came up to console him before Hamlin went over to thank his pit crew. He was then met by his daughters, who were shattered that after such a dominant season, the NASCAR Cup Series Championship was yanked away from him by a caution in the closing laps.