Denny Hamlin reflected on Sunday’s eero 400 at Chicagoland Speedway with unusual candor on his Actions Detrimental podcast this week. The Joe Gibbs Racing veteran took responsibility for his role in what became a JGR 1-2-3 finish rather than a personal victory.
Chase Briscoe won for the first time in 2026, Christopher Bell finished second, and Hamlin, who started from pole and led 30 laps, came home third. From the outside, it was a strong day. From Hamlin’s perspective, it was a missed opportunity that he placed squarely on himself.
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“Well, you can’t win them all, I guess, although I thought I was. I just think I had a role in us not winning… Just not my best work. It wasn’t a lack of focus or anything like that. Just too nonchalant. If you let someone stay close enough in the game, they can get you in the end, and we definitely got beat,” Denny Hamlin said (3:04 onwards)
Denny Hamlin started from the pole and was immediately in the fight, running inside the top five through both stages and earning stage points in each. William Byron swept both stages, leading 91 laps in all and setting the pace that others chased throughout.
In Stage 2, Hamlin was running third when the pit cycle unfolded. He pitted on Lap 219, coming off the road with track position while Byron cycled out from the lead a lap later. Through the stop sequence, Briscoe jumped Byron for the race lead and held it for the final 46 laps of the eero 400.
Bell closed rapidly in the closing circuits and was within a tenth of a second with two laps remaining, but dirty air in the final lap tightened his car, and Briscoe crossed the line 0.276 seconds clear. Hamlin, meanwhile, struck the outside wall with seven laps remaining. At that point, he was 2.42 seconds behind Briscoe, and the wall contact ended any realistic chance he had at the front.
Hamlin ultimately finished over three seconds behind the winner. When asked at what point during the race focus slipped, he added:
“I didn’t lose focus. I didn’t have a sense of urgency until the third stage. We had some not great restarts, where I was like, ‘Okay, don’t worry about me going three-wide. I’m just going to go ahead and push here.’ Normally, I’d take the run go three-wide… I had a run on him (Byron), and I thought, ‘No, I’ll just push him. It’s fine.’ I felt that strongly about our car after about 20 laps or so… But you’ve got to give credit also to the guys that I was racing with.”
The JGR top three at Chicagoland was the second of 2026, the first coming at Nashville, where the order was reversed with Denny Hamlin winning. He leads by 44 points over Tyler Reddick, who suffered another mechanical issue for the fourth significant setback in his last five races.
Denny Hamlin gives his Chicagoland return verdict: “Why can’t you have two?”
The Chicago Street Course is in active negotiations to return to the 2027 NASCAR Cup Series, with a date change away from the Fourth of July weekend emerging as the central condition of the deal. Discussions between NASCAR and the city are advancing, with a late May window, after the Sueños Music Festival, emerging as a likely slot.
Chicagoland Speedway, meanwhile, returned to the Cup schedule after a six-year absence on Sunday and made a compelling case for its return. It had a sellout crowd, 28 lead changes among 13 drivers, four-wide racing from the apron to the wall, and the kind of racing that the 1.5-mile oval has historically produced. The only blemish was some pre-race parking disruption due to rain.
Speaking about whether the 2027 calendar can accommodate both, Denny Hamlin said on Actions Detrimental (44:00 onwards):
“I have no idea. I mean, why can’t you have two?”
Denny Hamlin then differentiated the two events as serving entirely different audiences:
“I would venture to say that the audience is vastly different. If I looked around in Chicago(land), I would have said, ‘Those are our avid fans. Those are our avid fans that watch us week in, week out.’ When I went to the Chicago (street course), I said, ‘Ain’t none of these people been to a NASCAR race before?”
Every new addition to the calendar creates pressure somewhere else, and how NASCAR navigates that remains to be seen.
Edited by Anurup Chakraborty
