Dale Earnhardt Jr. reacts to Denny Hamlin championship heartbreaker, pulling for Hendrick

The 2025 NASCAR Cup Series championship race at Phoenix Raceway was a battle of Joe Gibbs Racing versus Hendrick Motorsports to determine the season champion: JGR’s Denny Hamlin and Chase Briscoe against HMS’ William Byron and Kyle Larson.

Rarely does Dale Earnhardt Jr. make known that he’s cheering for one particular driver or team to win. But this past Sunday at Phoenix Raceway, he was all-in on HMS, the team he once drove for and the team that shares a technical alliance with JR Motorsports. While Larson won the championship for HMS, Earnhardt still isn’t sure how he feels about it.

“I’m not gonna bullsh*t, I wanted Hendrick Motorsports to be the champions,” Earnhart said on Tuesday’s Dale Jr. Download. “Rick’s my friend, I got a lot of friends over there, we have an alliance here and work relationship through JR Motorsports. So, yes, I’m pulling for HMS to pull it off, and they did, and I was happy for them. But I don’t know how to feel about all of this that happened Sunday.”

Larson found a way to win the 2025 title despite, at one point, going a lap down and failing to lead a single lap. Hamlin, meanwhile, led a championship race record 208 laps and was less than three miles away from winning his first championship before William Byron blew a tire and went into the wall, forcing NASCAR to throw the caution.

Hamlin and the field came down pit road, the No. 11 team opting to give him four fresh Goodyear tires. Larson and five others went with two tires while others stayed out, creating a sizeable gap between the Championship 4 competitors. Hamlin didn’t have enough time to catch Larson, who won his second championship.

Denny Hamlin came as close as ever to winning first NASCAR championship

Hamlin, who has long embraced playing the villain, found himself in a position where he was the sentimental favorite to win. Earnhardt said that regardless of if you love or hate Hamlin, it had gotten to a point where everyone wanted to see him finally win a championship. He was right there at the end but ultimately, he came up short.

“He’s become this guy where a lot of people maybe still don’t pull for him, they aren’t fans of his, but he somehow had fell into this position Sunday over the course of the last several months of, ‘Man, I don’t like the guy, but I hope he gets it because he deserves it.’ He goes out there and is by far the best car and you’re sitting there going, ‘Alright, it’s his day. Denny’s gonna get his damn championship, and we can all go down the road.’ We’re sitting there feeling that this is how it was meant to be,” Earnhardt said.

“This is a very similar Dale Earnhardt going after the Daytona 500, 20 years of trying, very similar. If Denny wins the championship, everybody in the industry would be like, ‘You know what, I’m glad he got it.’ Even the people that don’t like it, I’m glad he got it. … We’re sitting there, and we all watched what happened in the end there. I’ll be honest, I don’t know how to feel about it. I know how Denny fans feel about it. I’ve read a lot of social media, I know how a lot of people feel about it.”