Denny Hamlin’s victory at Nashville showed us how the driver had matured and was finally learning from his mistakes. The veteran Toyota driver had found himself in an intense battle with his teammates, Christopher Bell and Chase Briscoe, after the final restart.

Bell had the fastest car and was cutting laps, and at a point, the three Joe Gibbs Racing cars were running three-wide and battling for the lead. After the race, Jordan Bianchi from The Athletic asked him,

"In that moment, are you even thinking about the potential catastrophic outcome of it could wipe out not just two JGR cars, but we're talking three?"

"Well, that's why, on the last lap, I committed to run just from the bottom," replied Hamlin.

When they were battling in the last few laps, Hamlin "kept side drafting then trying to drive in deep enough to clear him,” he explained. “I realized he was not going to let me clear him.”

Hamlin then admitted that at one specific corner, his fear got too real. “I think one of the corners we were stuck on each other the entire corner. I thought that our wheels had locked together.”

It was at this moment that the driver’s outlook changed, and he focused on driving a cleaner lap rather than a more aggressive one.

That moment completely changed his approach to entering the final lap, and as he said, he decided to run from the bottom. “I learned from my mistakes,” Hamlin said.

Why? He wanted to do it to minimize risk. “I’m not going to wipe us out,” he stated. “I’m not going to try to self-clear myself like I had done in these situations.

Well, his efforts did pay off. On the last lap, Bell drove in so deep into Turn 1 that Hamlin barely cleared off of Turn 2. The result was a dramatic 1-2-3 finish for Joe Gibbs Racing.

“What an unbelievable day starting first, going to last and then back to first,” said Hamlin post-race, who was put in the back of the pack for jumping the start of the race.

The biggest learning was that Hamlin had finally figured out that sometimes the most aggressive move is actually not to make one at all.

And in his “21 years of experience,” this came after a series of incidents where he had chosen otherwise.

Hamlin’s history of aggressive mistakes

Denny Hamlin’s caution at Nashville was likely born from years of aggressive driving. The biggest example came in 2013 at Auto Club Speedway, where he tangled with former teammate Joey Logano and suffered a serious back injury after slamming into the inside wall.

That incident came against the backdrop of another one earlier in the month, when Hamlin had spun Logano at Bristol during another heated battle.

Take another example from 2016 in Kansas, where Hamlin admitted that he was “just going for it” while forcing the issue in a battle that triggered a late-race crash. This aggressive style also contributed to another expensive contact incident with 23XI driver Bubba Wallace in 2025.

These moments cumulatively show that there was some truth to Hamlin’s reputation for being overly aggressive, and maybe that’s exactly why moderation became the key at Nashville.

Read more at the RFK Racing Digest!

Written by

Uday Jakhar

Edited by

Suyashdeep Sason