If Kansas is the Heartland of America, then Denny Hamlin might want to consider skipping it on his next road trip. Because lately, this place doesn’t just break your race, it breaks your spirit.
And Sunday was another entry in what’s becoming an oddly specific genre: How Denny Hamlin Loses Races He Really Should Win at Kansas Speedway.
Which is strange, because on paper, this is his place. Four wins. A master of the rhythm here. The sort of driver who, when the race settles into that long green-flag run, looks like he’s simply decided to take the trophy home early.
That was the script again.
Hamlin led 131 laps. Controlled the race. Won Stage 1. Did all the things you’re supposed to do when you intend to win a NASCAR race without unnecessary drama. And yet, when it mattered—when the final laps turned from a chess match into a street fight, he found himself on the wrong side of it. Again.
If this all feels familiar, that’s because it is.
Cast your mind back to last fall at Kansas Speedway. Hamlin was there. Leading. In control. Within touching distance of another win. And then, in the space of a few corners, it all unraveled in spectacular fashion.
On that day, Chase Elliott arrived like an uninvited guest at the worst possible moment. Taking the white flag in fifth, Elliott watched as Hamlin muscled past Bubba Wallace, forcing him wide. It looked aggressive. It looked decisive. It looked like the winning move.
Because while Hamlin and Wallace were busy sorting out their differences, Elliott simply drove underneath both of them and stole the win. Clean, clinical, and utterly brutal.
Fast forward to Sunday, and the details change, but the ending doesn’t.
A late caution, triggered by a spin from a car six laps down, reset everything. The calm disappeared. Strategy went out the window. And suddenly Hamlin was back in the same uncomfortable position: leading a restart where anything could, and probably would, happen.
Afterward, he didn’t bother dressing it up.
“I mean, obviously it’s not winning,” Hamlin said. “It’s Cody Ware, six laps down wrecking. I don’t know. It just added up.”
There was frustration, yes. But more than that, there was recognition. A pattern forming in real time.
“I feel for the same move that the 5 got me a couple years ago when I was on the inside,” he added. “I got to learn from those mistakes that I make, not executing those last few laps.”
And then there was the moment that summed it all up—a big run, nowhere to go, and a decision not to lift.
“Yeah, I had a big run off of turn two… wasn’t a whole lot of room. I wasn’t going to lift. Yeah, just got in the wall. But it didn’t really affect the finishing position.”
Which is, in its own way, the most telling line of all.
Because at Kansas, for Hamlin, it’s not the wall that’s costing him races. It’s everything that happens just before it, the split-second decisions, the positioning, the chaos that he used to control but now seems to slip through his fingers at the worst possible time.
Four wins here say he’s one of the best to ever do it at this track.
The last two races say something else entirely.
And right now, Kansas isn’t Hamlin’s kingdom.
It’s the place where things go wrong.
Greg was a writer for DriveTribe supporting Amazon's The Grand Tour and has been published in major publications across the country including the Los Angeles Times, the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He was also a contributor to Chicken Soup for the NASCAR Soul, published in 2010, and the Christmas edition in 2016. He wrote as the NASCAR, Formula 1, Auto Reviews and National Veterans Affairs Examiner for Examiner.com and has appeared on Fox News. He holds a BS degree in communications, and a Masters degree in psychology. He is currently the weekend Motorsports Editor for Autoweek and a regular contributor to Forbes.
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