DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. (AP) — There's no telling what version of Denny Hamlin will race this upcoming NASCAR season, which unofficially begins Wednesday night with The Clash, an exhibition race held at grassroots Bowman Gray Stadium in North Carolina.
Like most of the NASCAR community, Hamlin has had a rollercoaster of an offseason. His began in the November season finale when an elusive Cup Series championship was ripped from his fingers three laps away
from the title he's never been able to win.
Then came the December federal antitrust trial in which Michael Jordan-led 23XI Racing, a team in which Hamlin is co-owner, joined with Front Row Motorsports to sue NASCAR. The bruising trial lasted nine days before NASCAR settled, with monetary damages apparently exceeding $300 million while teams were given the permanent charter status they fought over for more than two years.
The euphoria of that victory was short-lived for Hamlin: his father, Dennis, who mortgaged everything the Hamlin family owned to get his son to NASCAR's top level, was killed in a late December house fire. Dennis Hamlin had been terminally ill at the time of the fire and his son had been desperately trying to win a Cup title while his father was still alive.
The loss of the championship left Hamlin stunned. His father's death, while expected, came in a far more traumatic manner, that could have broken Hamlin. Few would have been surprised if he'd walked away from driving for Joe Gibbs Racing in search of a bit of mental peace.
Alas, he's forging ahead, at 45 the oldest full-time driver in the Cup Series, and starts with the Clash to honor his commitments in the No. 11 Toyota. Hamlin is a four-time winner of the exhibition race, and his 2006 victory as a rookie at Daytona burst him onto the Cup scene as a budding star.
He's now a future Hall of Famer with 60 career Cup victories who won a series-high six races in 2025. When he lost the title because of a late caution in November, he said after the race he couldn't even think about getting back in a race car anytime soon.
“Golly, in this moment I never want to race a car ever again. I mean, my fun meter is pegged," he said after losing the championship to Kyle Larson.
As the calendar flipped to a new year, he's ready to get back to work.
“I've considered all options; I made a promise to Joe and the Gibbs family,” Hamlin said before The Clash.
The season officially opens Feb. 15 with the Daytona 500, a race Hamlin has won three times. William Byron is the two-time defending winner.
NASCAR spent more than two years fighting with teams over a new charter agreement and when 23XI and Front Row didn't like the terms on the renewal, they sued.
The lawsuit revealed deep animosity between many teams and NASCAR, which was founded in 1948 and remains solely owned by the Florida-based France family.
The court battle took its toll.
NASCAR at the start of the year parted ways with Steve Phelps, an employee of more than two decades who last year was named the first Commissioner of the sport. The separation came after texts revealed in discovery showed inflammatory messaging from Phelps toward the teams, even if he was fighting for them to receive a better charter agreement. He ultimately fell in line with his bosses and NASCAR does not go into 2026 better off without Phelps, who was the most approachable executive in the company and walked a fine line of being fair to the teams while answering to the France family.
Steve O'Donnell, another longtime NASCAR employee, was promoted to president when Phelps became commissioner. How the sport is governed in the wake of the lawsuit will be something to watch, with many looking toward Ben Kennedy, the great-grandson of NASCAR's founder, to step up as the fourth generation to run the family business.
“Phelps is gone and you've got O'Donnell and you've got Ben,” said Rick Hendrick, owner of the reigning Daytona 500 winning car as well as Larson's Cup Series championship team.
“Can Ben mature up quick enough to do all the things that need to be done? Or does NASCAR need a partner or to get someone in there?”
NASCAR this year welcomes 19-year-old Connor Zilisch to the top Cup Series after he won 10 races in the Xfinity Series last season. He will drive for Trackhouse Racing and heads into his first Daytona 500 as the most-hyped rising star in nearly two decades.
Zilisch is fresh off a runner-up performance in the Rolex 24 at Daytona, where he drove in the top class for a team owned by NASCAR chairman Jim France. He's won in nearly everything he's driven since launching his career and is expected to take the series by storm.
NASCAR is reverting to a championship format that closely resembles the 10-race version introduced 22 years ago.
The system will be a 10-race format consisting of the top 16 drivers in the regular-season standings. There will be no driver eliminations every three races, winning will be incentivized and its name will return to “The Chase.” The driver with the most points at the Nov. 8 finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway will be the champion.
In the most recent version, regular-season victories guaranteed a slot in the 10-race playoffs, a win in any of the first three three-race rounds advanced a driver into the next round, while the bottom three drivers at the end of each round were eliminated.
Finally, the winner was simply the highest-finishing driver among four remaining title contenders in the season finale.
The 2026 system will reward the most consistent driver over the entire season with a Cup title.
The 2026 schedule again shows NASCAR's willingness to explore change as a new venue — on a Naval Base in Coronado, California — has been added as a street race.
NASCAR won't return to the streets of Chicago for a fourth consecutive year and instead will race at Chicagoland Speedway in Joliet for the first time since 2019. Mexico City was also dropped after one money-losing attempt last year for NASCAR.
The season finale has returned to Homestead-Miami Speedway, where it was held from 2002 through 2019. NASCAR moved it to Phoenix in 2020 but now says it will rotate the finale among multiple tracks starting this year with the return to Homestead.
It's a terrific track for Larson to go for a third Cup title — he has two wins at Homestead and six top-five finishes in 12 career starts.
___
AP auto racing: https://apnews.com/hub/auto-racing
