by Patrick Zier | Jul 25, 2025 |
It was raining on Denny Hamlin’s parade at Dover last Sunday. Not that he cared. Hamlin is 44 years old, an age when most drivers have called it a career, and he is the best driver in the sport, bar none, and that really isn’t open to debate.
NASCAR’s point standings say otherwise. They have three of Rick Hendrick’s drivers, Chase Elliott, William Byron and Kyle Larson, ahead of Hamlin, but that just shows how absurd the NASCAR system is.
Ever since 2004, when NASCAR decided it had to be more like stick-and-ball sports to compete with them and introduced its own version of a playoff to determine its champion, it has been trying to drive that square peg into a round hole. But it will never work because NASCAR isn’t at all like stick-and-ball sports.
That, though, was the furthest thing from Hamlin’s mind as he found himself sitting out the Dover rain delay, waiting for the sun, or at least for the track to dry, to continue his pursuit of victory.
The rain delay offered an insight into why Hamlin is better at what he does than anybody else, why he is more competitive. Simply put, it’s because he embraces the moment, accepts and looks forward to each and every challenge that comes up during a race.
“I never thought that there was no hope we would go back racing,” Hamlin said according to NASCAR.com. “I do think you have two choices with your mentality; you either get out of the car, hope and pray this never goes back green, you just win the thing because of the weather, or you look at the radar, use your brain and say ‘We’re going back racing, so I better do everything I can to prepare for what happens when I do get back in the car.’
“I just kind of went back to the bus, changed, did a little bit of work and came back out here and I was prepared to get after it when we got back in the car,” Hamlin remarked. “The job’s not done ’til we get to lap 400 (the last lap). Today (Sunday) was an example of that.”
Nobody else in NASCAR thinks like that. The really good ones, like Larson, rely on their physical talent, or, like Elliott, they use their experience. But they drive primarily with their feet and not their head. Virtually every other driver in the sport sees an obstacle, the unexpected, as an impediment, something that will prevent them from achieving their goal.
Not Hamlin. “I just feel like when I’m tested, I’m going to give you a little more. When you doubt me, I’m going to give you a little more. Like, I just feel I thrive in game-time moments, finishing off races like this (Dover),” Hamlin said.
“When I think about it, when I go home, that’s going to be a pound-your-chest moment. They had three shots at me and they couldn’t do it. They had fresher tires and they couldn’t do it.
“It’s just very gratifying,” Hamlin continued. “I hype myself up in that process, while I’m in the game. I’m not out there thinking about how are we going to lose this, worrying about something happening.
“I’m sure there’s going to be another caution. We were going into turn three, about to take the white, there’s another caution,” he said. “I’m not thinking about ‘dang it, shoot, we’re going to end up blowing this race,’ I’m not,” Hamlin declared. “I’m waiting on who’s next, who’s next, who am I going to beat next?”
Hamlin’s approach is shaking up NASCAR’s upper echelon. His success on the track, the respect he commands within Joe Gibbs Racing, has made JGR, and not Hendrick, the new 500-pound gorilla in stock car racing.
This despite the NASCAR point standings which say otherwise. But if you put those aside, and really look at who’s competitive, JGR’s domination is inescapable.
The Old Guy Sport competition index does that. It’s emphasis on leading laps under green, finishing in the top five and winning races paints a very different picture.
If you look at the last five races on oval tracks, for example, Hendrick’s four drivers – Elliott, Larson, Byron and Alex Bowman – have accumulated 204 points using the OGS criteria as a measuring stick.
Contrast that with JGR. By himself, Hamlin has 202 points including two wins and four top fives. No Hendrick driver won any of these races and they only have six top fives between them.
When you add in Chase Briscoe, who also has a win plus two top fives and 150 total points; Ty Gibbs, with two top fives and 41 points and the struggling Christopher Bell, who has just eight, JGR drivers have combined for 401 points over the five race period. That’s nearly double Hendrick’s total.
It all comes back to Hamlin though, and what he’s doing. “NASCAR is an emotional game where you can really get caught up in stuff that doesn’t matter,” Hamlin explained on NASCAR.com.
“So I just try to look at it from a very straightforward point of view, a numbers point of view. Find out where I’m bad, analyze what I’m doing, analyze how the best drivers do it, then figure out how I can go faster like them and give that information to the team,” Hamlin said.
“It typically takes me a little bit longer to give the team that feedback because I like to analyze it, make sure it’s right, before I tell them,” Hamlin commented. “It’s about going through that process and how I do it.”
So, there’s really no question that his unique approach makes Hamlin the best driver out there. The only question is how long it will last.
NASCAR NOTES
Three most likely winners at Indy: 1-Dave Blaney, 2-Denny Hamlin, 3-Chase Briscoe. Last year’s winner at Indy: Kyle Larson. Top five at Indy last year: 1-Larson, 2-Tyler Reddick, 3-Blaney, 4-Christopher Bell, 5-Bubba Wallace.
Last week’s Old Guy Sport Dover picks: 1-Hamlin, 2-Briscoe, 3-Larson. Dover winner: Hamlin. OGS season record: 9-7.
OGS competition index top 10 after 17 races: 1-Hamlin 440 points, 2-Larson 322, 3-Bell 286, 4-Briscoe 257, 5-William Byron 237, 6-Shane van Gisbergen 224, 7-Blaney 214, 8-Chase Elliott 197, 9-Ty Gibbs 122, 10-Alex Bowman 117.
OGS competition index top 10 on intermediate tracks (tracks similar to Indy): 1-Hamlin 209 points, 2-Blaney 196, 3-Larson 186, Byron 186; 5-Briscoe 148, 6-Ross Chastain 102, 7-Joey Logano 79, 8-Bell 71, 9-Chris Buescher 64, 10-Bowman 63.
by Patrick Zier | Jul 18, 2025 |
There were, quite honestly, questions about whether Chase Briscoe could cut it. He was making the jump from Stewart-Haas to Joe Gibbs Racing, one of the two premier Cup teams in NASCAR, and for Briscoe, it wasn’t really a jump. It was a giant leap.
Not that Briscoe lacked talent. In 2021, he dominated NASCAR’s Xfinity Series, a stepping stone to Cup, with nine wins, most ever by a Ford driver and second only to Sam Ard’s 10 victories in 1983, the modern record. So he could drive.
But Briscoe hit Stewart-Haas in 2022 while he was on the way up and they were on the way down; he was a bright young star driving for a burned out team.
Stewart-Haas became a rudderless ship, drifting aimlessly in the NASCAR Cup Series until it finally hit a rocky shoal where if floundered and sank in 2024.
Briscoe, though, managed to stay afloat. He won two races over the three-year period he was at Stewart-Haas including Darlington’s iconic Southern 500 in 2024, the last race a Stewart-Haas car would ever win.
Then, with everybody at Stewart-Haas scrambling and looking for ways to save their careers, Briscoe caught a break. Martin Truex, one of the stabilizing forces on Gibbs’ team, retired after the 2024 season and Gibbs needed somebody to replace him.
Gibbs, a former Super Bowl-winning coach with the now Washington Commanders, then the Redskins, has always believed that how a person fits into a group is just as important as what he brings to it.
And he passed on some more experienced, more seasoned candidates in favor of Briscoe because he liked the way Briscoe fit, the way he approached racing and what he brought to the table in that regard.
“If you look at Chase, if you look at his background, he’s paid a huge price to be able to get here,” Gibbs said as reported by NASCAR.com. “If you look at the years he spent sleeping on people’s couches and everything it shows you again what a hard climb it is to get to the Cup level. He just deserves so much credit,” Gibbs commented.
Still, this would not be an easy transition, as Briscoe quickly found out. “It’s unlike anything I’ve ever gone through in my career,” Briscoe said on NASCAR.com after securing his first win for JGR at Pocono. “The only similarity, I would say, is being teammates with Kevin Harvick (at Stewart-Haas).
“But even when I was there, Kevin wasn’t really winning either,” Briscoe continued. “The expectation was always there with Kevin but it wasn’t necessarily guys winning week in and week out.
“At Stewart-Haas, it honestly felt like you shocked the world when you won,” Briscoe said. “Here, it doesn’t feel like that because they win a lot. It’s definitely been an adjustment for me. Even just racing with teammates that are winning has been an adjustment for me. It’s definitely been a big learning curve.
“It’s crazy now looking back on it, what I was racing against every single weekend,” Briscoe continued. “It’s mind-blowing how the cars drive, the preparation leading into the week. Nothing against SHR, but now, being inside the walls of JGR, it’s mind-blowing the level they compete at.”
Briscoe noticed the difference between Stewart-Haas and JGR in the first race of the year, The Clash, at Winston-Salem, N.C. “When we went to Bowman Gray (the track in Winston-Salem) I ran the first five laps of practice and I’m like ‘Holy smokes, this is unlike anything I’ve ever driven before,'” Briscoe said.
“It took me a long time, longer than I would have liked, I would say up until Charlotte qualifying I was always underdriving the car,” Briscoe commented. “I am so used to having to lift in certain spots because the car couldn’t take it.
“But the last month (after the Charlotte race) I feel like I finally have been getting used to what this car is capable of, how hard I can push it,” Briscoe said.
“It feels normal now, where at the beginning of the year it felt so foreign, how far I was able to drive it into the corner, how hard I could pick up the gas. Everything was the opposite of what I’ve been used to,” Briscoe added.
“From where he came from, there wasn’t much accountability,” James Small, Briscoe’s crew chief, explained. “Nobody was holding his feet to the fire. That’s probably been a big wake-up call for him.”
“I mean I read the internet,” Briscoe said. “People are like ‘Why would you put that guy in the car?’ Even when I won three poles in a row, not winning the race, people are trashing you,” he remarked.
“I knew we were more than capable, I knew myself that I was capable. But you never really know until you do it,” Briscoe declared. “It’s certainly nice to get that monkey off our back.”
Winning at Pocono showed Briscoe can get the job done, but he had already proven that at Stewart-Haas. What he has to understand is that at JGR, it’s assumed you’re going to win. The difference between Stewart-Haas and JGR is that it’s expected you’ll do it more than once.
NASCAR NOTES
Three most likely winners at Dover: 1-Denny Hamlin, 2-Chase Briscoe, 3-Kyle Larson. Last year’s winner at Dover: Hamlin. Top five at Dover last year: 1-Hamlin, 2-Larson, 3-Martin Truex, 4-Kyle Busch, 5-Chase Elliott.
Last week’s Old Guy Sport Sonoma picks: 1-Shane van Gisbergen, 2-Ty Gibbs, 3-Michael McDowell. Sonoma winner: van Gisbergen. OGS season record: 8-7.
OGS competition index top 10: 1-Hamlin 384 points, 2-Larson 302, 3-Christopher Bell 279, 4-William Byron 237, 5-van Gisbergen 224, 6-Briscoe 215, 7-Ryan Blaney 214, 8-Elliott 122, 9-Gibbs 112, 10-Ross Chastain 104.
OGS competition index top 10 on short tracks (tracks similar to Dover): 1-Hamlin 155, 2-Larson 115, 3-Bell 103, 4-Bubba Wallace 30, Gibbs 30; 6-Elliott 25, 7-Josh Berry 24, 8-Briscoe 20, 9-Blaney 15, 10-Joey Logano 12.
by Patrick Zier | Jul 11, 2025 |
Shane van Gisbergen is currently tearing it up on NASCAR’s street and road courses but, at least right now, he couldn’t win a race on an oval if his racing life depended on it. And it does.
Welcome to the new NASCAR, where a 36-year-old New Zealander who knows next to nothing about running on an oval, the traditional foundation of the sport, can surge to the top of stock car racing by being better at turning left and right than any of his peers.
He is so good, in fact, that some are ready to crown him as NASCAR’s best ever even though he has only run four road races in his very brief NASCAR career (he did, however, win three of them).
Until recently, NASCAR has never been about road racing. And back in the day, it was even kind of looked down on by the drivers who, for the most part, came out of the rural South and engaged in the rough-and-tumble, get-out-of-my-way competition that got everything going.
There was only one road race, at Riverside, Calif, and it led into the Daytona 500 which, at that time, was not the first race of the season. When Riverside closed, in 1988, Sonoma and Watkins Glen were added to the schedule and until recently they were the only two road races NASCAR ran on a regular basis.
This year there are six, including two in a row, Chicago last week and Sonoma this Sunday. And van Gisbergen, who won Chicago, will be a heavy favorite to win at Sonoma. And he will be favored again at Watkins Glen, which is Aug. 10th.
But after that, van Gisbergen’s problems begin. If he wins at Sonoma and the Glen, he could head into the playoffs with four wins, all on road courses, and that does not bode well for his chances at a championship.
The 10-race playoff is an elimination derby, with 16 drivers competing. Three are eliminated after the first three races, three more after races four through six and three more after races seven through nine, leaving four eligible for the championship in the final race at Phoenix.
And nine of those races are on ovals. There is a race on the Charlotte Motor Speedway road course after the first elimination round, but van Gisbergen isn’t going to get that far because he simply isn’t comfortable enough running ovals to compete.
His two best oval finishes this year are a 14th at Charlotte (on the regular track) and an 18th at Michigan, and he wasn’t a factor in either race.
“That’s why I’m here, I guess (to win on road courses),” van Gisbergen said as reported by NASCAR.com after the Chicago race. “Justin (team owner Justin Marks) took a massive chance on me to bring me over (from New Zealand), and as I’ve said many times, these races are like a holiday to me. It’s the ovals where I’m really focused on getting better and better,” van Gisbergen added.
“I think it’s a unique project with Shane,” Marks commented after the race in Chicago, also on NASCAR.com. “I wouldn’t do this – we wouldn’t be doing this if we thought we could go win road courses and we know we’re not going to run that good on ovals because he’s never done it before,” Marks continued. “At this level of the game, you have to be a complete package.
“For his level of intelligence and how he studies and how he adapts and how he learns, there’s a real opportunity here for him to figure the ovals out and get fast at the ovals and be a complete Cup driver,” Marks said.
“I think we’ve seen him coming that way just in the last month and a half. He’s pretty consistently top 20 now on the ovals and when he started running he was kind of like 30th, 32nd and I think that development is just going to continue.
“I think when you think about the project, we’ve got somebody who’s talented and that we can make a Cup driver out of, and while he learns, in the meantime, we can win a ton of road courses and punch that ticket to the playoffs and give our sponsors a ton of return for their investment,” Marks declared.
At 36, van Gisbergen is much older then the normal driver who moves up to Cup, and maybe you can teach an old dog new tricks. Just not this year, though.
NASCAR NOTES
Three most likely winners at Sonoma: 1-Shane van Gisbergen, 2-Ty Gibbs, 3-Michael McDowell. Last year’s winner at Sonoma: Kyle Larson. Top five at Sonoma last year: 1- Larson, 2-McDowell, 3-Chris Buescher, 4-Chase Elliott, 5-Ross Chastain.
Last week’s Old Guy Sport competition index picks: 1-Christopher Bell, 2-van Gisbergen, 3-Elliott. Chicago winner: van Gisbergen. OGS season record: 7-7.
OGS competition index top 10 after 15 races: 1-Denny Hamlin 384 points, 2-Larson 301, 3-Bell 269, 4-William Byron 237, 5-Ryan Blaney 214, 6-Chase Briscoe 175, 7-van Gisbergen 149, 8-Gibbs 112, 9-Chastain 102, 10-Tyler Reddick 98.
OGS competition index top 10 on road courses (tracks similar to Sonoma): 1-van Gisbergen 149 points, 2-Bell 95, 3-Reddick 65, 4-Gibbs 51, 5-Elliott 50, 6-Byron 40, 7-Kyle Busch 38, 8-McDowell 27, 9-Hamlin 20, Alex Bowman 20.
