Denny Hamlin reflects on aftermath of 2025 NASCAR championship loss, family reaction

Denny Hamlin was obviously disappointed when he fell short of winning the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series championship at Phoenix Raceway earlier this month. Hamlin had the best car, leading a championship race record 208 laps, but it was Kyle Larson who took home the trophy.

But when Hamlin got back to pit road, he found it important to maintain his composure as much as he could. His kids were devastated, and, in that moment, he knew it was time for a life lesson.

“I tried to just maintain my composure as much as I could, especially for the kids because they can’t believe what they saw,” Hamlin said on Friday’s Actions Detrimental podcast. “All I know is what Jordan told me; Molly was super upset. Right when we came off pit road, she said that Molly started losing it, like, ‘why he’s 10th?’ I just tried to maintain my composure as much as I could for them to kind of teach them one of the life lessons of, you’re gonna face things that aren’t fair sometimes, and that’s what I did tell them.

“This is life, and you better get used to it that things are not always gonna happen as planned. Some things are gonna happen to you that are unfair at times, but that’s sports, that’s how it goes and can chalk it up to that’s sports and we got unlucky there or maybe we made a bad call. In the end, they didn’t really wanna hear any of that, for sure.”

Denny Hamlin admits NASCAR fans, drivers helped ease pain of championship loss

Hamlin has been at this for 20 years. He’s had a Hall of Fame career, but the one thing missing from his resume is a championship. This season was his best shot, and he still came up short.

Admittedly, Hamlin doesn’t even want to think about racing right now. Yes, he will return in 2026 and give it another go. Perhaps surprisingly, NASCAR’s villain has received plenty of support from fans and his fellow competitors. That, at least, has made it easier for him to move on from Phoenix.

“I think that the fans made it a lot easier,” Hamlin said. “I mean, the competitors made it easier. You know, I got to give so much appreciation to Kyle Larson and how gracious he was during all this. Very humble during all this and certainly during the banquet, giving myself and my team the props that we did deserve in that final race. He did nothing wrong. His team knew that they had to do something to try to win.

‘You know, they played the game as it was meant to be played. So, we definitely have a deserving champion in the 5 team, they scored more points than anyone else the entire year. There’s, you know, I don’t think anyone should ever question the deservingness of Kyle Larson’s championship because he definitely did.”