- Denny Hamlin said on his Actions Detrimental podcast that Chevrolet teams must “suck at the teat of the master” on superspeedways, with Hendrick Motorsports at the top, per Motorsport.com.
- Hamlin described Ross Chastain, who led the outside lane a lap down before pushing Kyle Larson to the win, as “doing what he’s told.”
- Hamlin finished eighth at Talladega, sits second in the standings, 73 points behind Larson with two races left, and Martinsville is next.
A Toyota Driver Maps the Pecking Order Behind Larson’s Talladega Win
“He’s doing what he’s told.”
Denny Hamlin needed five words to describe Ross Chastain’s race at Talladega Superspeedway. He said them on his Actions Detrimental podcast, then ranked the voices Chastain answers to. Hendrick Motorsports sits at the top of that list. Chevrolet comes next, Trackhouse Racing third, the crew chief fourth and the driver last.
“So as a driver, you’re the lowest on the totem pole when it comes to team orders or manufacturer orders,” Hamlin said.
Hamlin speaks from the outside. He drives the No. 11 Toyota for Joe Gibbs Racing, and at Talladega he was the only Toyota in the top ten. He finished eighth. The driver he is chasing for the Cup championship, Larson of Hendrick Motorsports, won the race with a charge from 11th to first on the final lap, his first career victory on a superspeedway. The result turned a five-point lead over Christopher Bell into a 73-point gap over Hamlin, who had started the day 31 points back.
Hamlin aimed no complaint at the winner. He said “the 5 car has earned his right to be the number one guy that everyone else has to look out for.” His target was the arrangement around Larson.
The Sunday Chevrolet Filled the Top Six
Chevrolet drivers from five different teams swept the first six places at Talladega: Larson and William Byron for Hendrick Motorsports, Ricky Stenhouse Jr. for Hyak Motorsports, Chastain for Trackhouse Racing, Cole Custer for Haas Factory Team and Carson Hocevar for Spire Motorsports. The manufacturer’s previous first-through-sixth finish in a Cup race came at Phoenix in November 2013, nearly 13 years earlier. Hendrick was the only team in both sweeps, and the 2013 result featured just three teams. Eight Chevrolets finished in the top ten. Todd Gilliland’s Ford, which fell from second to seventh in the closing seconds, and Hamlin’s Toyota were the only exceptions.
A widespread belief held that Chevrolet teams took the green flag with one main goal, which was to support Larson in every move he made. Byron pushed Larson for stage points through the first half of the race, and Larson scored the most stage points of everyone else. Chastain, a lap down, led the outside lane and played jammer for the cars behind him. He stood to gain as well: a caution would have put him at the tail of the lead lap. Chastain did get back on the lead lap, delivered the final-lap push that Larson needed and finished in the top five himself.
Hamlin did not entirely begrudge the plan. He said on the podcast that it contributed to Larson’s win and to the near knockout blow Larson delivered to everyone else in the championship chase.
His own last lap went another way. Hamlin was pushing Stenhouse into the lead and said he was “committed to stay with Ricky,” a Chevrolet driver he expected to do what was best for himself and not what he was told to do. Then Gilliland clipped him and knocked him into Austin Hill. The No. 11 lost all its momentum, the pack swamped it, and Hamlin dropped to eighth as Larson surged forward.
Stenhouse described his final seconds differently. He led out of the last corner, focused on the No. 24 of Byron, and Larson came up the inside. Larson won by 0.041 seconds over Byron, with Stenhouse 0.066 seconds back. “Just one wrong move there at the end, trying to block the No. 24, we gave the race to the No. 5,” Stenhouse said.
Hamlin’s Totem Pole
Hamlin said the Chevrolet performance center is dictated by Rick Hendrick, and he spelled out what follows from that.
“That just is what it is,” Hamlin said. “And so, you have to suck at the teat of the master. I mean, that’s just the way this thing works. And I’m sorry, but that is the truth.”
He extended the point to every team outside Hendrick’s shop. In his words, “I don’t believe anyone will ever be Tier One with Chevy other than Hendrick,” and he named control as the reason. “And so as long as you control it, you control how that information gets shared,” he said. He added that he does not believe Richard Childress Racing receives the same level of information from Chevrolet that Hendrick does.
Those are Hamlin’s opinions, delivered on a podcast. He expects few people to like the message: “It’s a hard truth that not a lot of people are going to love, but it is the truth.”
Chastain is his example. Hamlin said drivers in Chastain’s seat have no room to say no. “They have no choice,” he said when he finished the ranking, and he returned to the point twice more. “And so to bring it all back, people like Ross, they have no choice but to just do what they are told.” In another passage he said “you just have no choice but to do what you’re told.” He called it the place where superspeedway racing has ended up: “And unfortunately, superspeedway racing has gotten to that point.”
The Other Voices in the Title Chase
In a way, the outside lane Chastain led contributed to the second big crash at Talladega, which wiped out several contenders including Joey Logano. Logano did not blame the Trackhouse driver.
“It’s a race,” Logano said. “Everyone has a right to go racing. He’s racing for himself as well.” He added: “I don’t think you can really blame it on anyone.” He closed with a line about the next stop: “I like Martinsville.”
Ryan Blaney, 107 points behind Larson after the race, said of his title hopes: “It’s on life support.” He added: “That’s for sure, but you never know.”
Larson refused to treat the title as won. “There’s still two races,” he said, and he sketched a bad day at Martinsville in his own words: “We could go to Martinsville, there’s a stack-up in Turn 3 on the first lap. I could cave in the radiator and be done.”
His crew chief, Cliff Daniels, spent the week after the Phoenix race owning a setup mistake. “I walked in on Monday and owned it completely,” Daniels said, and he added: “It’s on me for the setup we had in the car.” Of the Talladega week, Daniels said: “The spirit of the team was up.” He offered a saying for the stretch: “a smooth sea does not make for a skilled sailor.” The team is going after its third championship in six years.
73 Points to Find in Two Races
Hamlin started ninth and lost another 42 points to Larson on the day, yet he moved up two places to second in the standings. After race 34 of 36, Larson has 2,441 points, Hamlin 2,368 and Christopher Bell 2,367, one point behind Hamlin. Chase Briscoe is 79 behind, Logano 100, Blaney 107 and Tyler Reddick 126. Only those seven drivers can still win the title.
Reddick races for 23XI Racing, and Hamlin co-owns that team with Michael Jordan. That makes Hamlin an owner with a driver in the same title fight.
Hamlin arrived at Talladega with 41 career starts there, two wins, the most recent in 2020, and a best finish of tenth in his previous five starts. Eighth was an improvement on that. His own assessment of the day was mixed. “If you asked me to start the day would I take an eighth, I mean, probably,” he said. “I guess so.” Of the stage points, he said: “We didn’t get stage points. We tried,” and he described “lots of games going on.” On Larson he said: “The 5 is on a massive run at the right time of the year.”
He was frustrated with the fuel-saving game and with the Next Gen car, which brought a new aero package to Talladega. “Unfortunately for us, they designed a car that just has so much drag in it,” he said. “You can’t take any more spoiler off this thing. It’s a sports car not meant to be running 200mph.”
Asked whether he can overcome the deficit, he gave the answer of a man who has been close before: “I don’t know. Maybe, maybe not.”
He has been close. Hamlin is in his 21st full-time season in the Cup Series, all of it with Joe Gibbs Racing, and he entered 2026 with 60 career wins. In 2010 he stayed in the title hunt through the final race at Homestead-Miami Speedway and finished second to Jimmie Johnson. In 2025 he won the pole for the championship race, led 208 of 319 laps, finished sixth and ended the year second in the standings. A Virginia native, he won five championships across three go-kart classes by age 15, with 127 feature wins. He won at Martinsville in 2025, his first victory there in a decade.
What Martinsville Can Settle
Martinsville comes next, on Sunday, Nov. 1, and the finale at Homestead-Miami follows one week later. If Larson leaves Martinsville with a 77-point lead, the championship is his. The same holds if he leads by 76 and Briscoe is further back. A driver can score 76 points at most in a single Cup race.
Hamlin goes to Martinsville with a number to attack and an argument on the record. He has won there before, and he has said in public what he thinks of the order in which Chevrolet teams line up behind Larson. Sunday will show how much of either carries over. Whatever happens, the 73-point gap is the first thing Hamlin has to close.
