NASCAR insiders weigh whether 2025 is Denny Hamlin's championship year after Gateway playoff win

Denny Hamlin just won his fifth NASCAR Cup Series race of the season, but will that lead to a championship at the end of the year? On The Teardown podcast, Jordan Bianchi and Jeff Gluck of The Athletic discussed whether 2025 is the year that Hamlin wins it all.

“I don’t know. I wish I had some insightful answer, but I don’t know,” Bianchi said. “Nobody knows. Denny doesn’t know. He’s doing the things he needs to do to put himself in position. If he can continue this run, there’s every reason to think so.

“…You just have to keep padding your bonus point totals, and that’s the big thing. You can’t make mistakes, and if you have a bad day, you got to be able to have enough point total to fall back on. He’s looked good right now, but he’s looked good many years, and it hasn’t come to fruition.”

Gluck isn’t sure if Denny Hamlin will win his first Cup series title this year. “I’m still never going to go out and just say and predict that Denny Hamlin is going to win a championship,” he said. “Something always happens, always has. But, maybe it is. The championship is going to go through Toyota. He’s certainly going to have a great shot. I actually think it could sort of depend on what teammates he has.”

More on Denny Hamlin’s NASCAR Championship chances

Gluck then mentioned that if Hamlin’s teammate, Christopher Bell, reaches the championship race, he is the pick to win it. He also mentioned that Hamlin’s other teammate, Chase Briscoe, has “a great shot” to win the title.

Hamlin has had his share of chances to win the title over the year but has come up short, finishing in the top four or top five in the standings multiple times. But the focus for him right now is getting 60 career NASCAR Cup Series race wins, and the victory at Gateway on Sunday got Hamlin to 59.

After the race on Sunday, Hamlin talked about getting the 200th win for Toyota. “It’s super special because they’ve been such a big partner of Joe Gibbs Racing for such a long time,” he said. “Certainly, I was worried when we switched over, gosh, felt like about 16, 17 years ago, somewhere in that range, from Chevy to Toyota. …It turned out to be the best partnership that they could imagine, being the top team. Now that I’ve got 23XI, I formed a different relationship with them. So yeah, I’ve got Toyota running through my blood both top and bottom.”