Denny Hamlin Didn’t Win the Title—He Won the Year

A driver who made more news off the track than in the race car nonetheless is the best choice for 2025 NASCAR Driver of the Year.

That would be Denny Hamlin, who won six Cup Series races and rode with his team co-owner, Michael Jordan, to a successful finish in the pair’s federal lawsuit against NASCAR.

Hamlin’s six-win season is his best since he won seven times in 2020. He showed consistency across the map with wins at Martinsville, Darlington, Dover, Michigan, St. Louis, and Las Vegas. And he came within a few minutes of finally scoring his first Cup championship, as Kyle Larson slipped in to claim the trophy after a late-race caution in the season finale at Phoenix Raceway spoiled a brilliant run by Hamlin.

In most seasons, the NASCAR Cup champion also can be labeled the Driver of the Year, but it’s easy to steer away from that conclusion in some years. Larson had a good year, winning three times and being in the right place at the right time to grab the championship when late-race circumstances turned the race on its head at Phoenix. But six drivers, including Hamlin, won as many or more races than Larson, and four won more.

The National Motorsports Press Association—an organization of writers, broadcasters, and photographers—awards its Richard Petty Driver of the Year award at the end of each season and currently is in the process of voting for the 2025 winner. Last season, the NMPA made an unusual choice in NASCAR Xfinity Series champion Justin Allgaier, who ended a career of frustration by finally winning that series title.

The NMPA’s award traditionally has gone to a Cup driver (and often to the series champion), but that has changed in recent years as the organization has broadened its focus to include other series. Max Verstappen, who stormed to the 2023 Formula 1 title with 19 victories, was that year’s Richard Petty Driver of the Year winner, an interesting junction of NASCAR’s all-time race winner and an F1 king.

This year’s Cup season had three standouts: Hamlin with six wins, Larson with three and the Cup title, and Shane Van Gisbergen, who surged to prominence with five road/street course wins, several of them in dominant fashion, in a Rookie of the Year season.

Van Gisbergen, who made strides on oval tracks this season but remains a work in progress beyond road courses, became the first driver since Bobby Allison in 1982 to win three races with margins of victory bigger than 10 seconds. At Mexico City in June, he embarrassed the rest of the field by winning by 16.567 seconds, the biggest win at a road course since 1979 at the now-defunct Riverside track in California.

SVG is likely to make even more noise as his portfolio grows.

Hamlin, though, stands out this year in performance with the most wins and consistency across a varied landscape of tracks. He reached a personal goal by scoring his 60th Cup Series win and is a lock for the NASCAR Hall of Fame despite forever chasing a Cup title without success. He plans to race at least two more seasons.

Although the Hamlin/Jordan/Front Row Motorsports lawsuit against NASCAR ended in a settlement, Hamlin wound up with virtually everything he and the other plaintiffs sought. It might have been his biggest “win” of the season at his slowest speed. The full impact won’t be known for years to come, but Hamlin, Jordan, and other team owners across the sport should see a substantial boost in their bottom lines—and their roles in the sport—almost immediately.