This year’s Championship 4 in the NASCAR Cup Series presents an illustration of and exercise in contrast. Two Hendrick Motorsports drivers against two Joe Gibbs Racing drivers. Two Chevrolets against two Toyotas. Several heroes and a clear “villain.”
After their own respective journeys through the NASCAR playoffs, Kyle Larson, Chase Elliott, Denny Hamlin, and Martin Truex Jr. have all earned the right to be a part of the Championship 4 and race for the right to be the champion this Sunday at Phoenix Raceway. The championship quartet all have their own respective circumstances that make their season stories compelling, and all four met with the media on Thursday at Championship 4 media day.
Here is a recap of the notable comments by the Championship 4 drivers.
Denny Hamlin
After last week’s late-race events at Martinsville Speedway, the biggest newsmaker of the Championship 4 has undoubtedly become Denny Hamlin. After taking umbrage with being spun out of the lead and a potential win by Alex Bowman, Hamlin has openly fumed over the way he was raced as well as being booed by fans, who he characterized as Chase Elliott fans that are still “bitter” about an incident where Hamlin turned Elliott racing for the win at Martinsville in 2017.
Considering Hamlin’s history, the past several days have given some legitimate cause for concern over his mindset entering another chance for him to win his first Cup Series championship. The story of Hamlin’s 2010 collapse, when he entered the season finale as the points leader only to break under pressure and lose the championship after a miserable race, is by now well-known.
Hamlin, however, seemingly embraced the distractions around him as well as his status as the “villain” in Sunday’s title race. And knowing that Hamlin winning a championship will upset his haters to no end has become a major part of his motivation.
“Everyone’s go-to is, ‘you haven’t won a championship.’ There’s nothing else they can say. There’s just nothing else they can say,” Hamlin said. “To me, I’m so motivated to go out there and show ’em what’s up. I think it’s fuel for me. It really is fuel for me. People don’t get in my head in a negative way. I turn it into positives, into motivation.
“Some people like to go in a hole and hide from it. I do not. I go at it head on. Anyone who’s around me knows, a lot of you in the media who have followed my career, when things go haywire or shit hits the fan, I usually come out swinging. We will come out swinging again.”
On account of his 46 career wins and multiple opportunities to win a championship, Denny Hamlin has come to be regarded as one of NASCAR’s greatest drivers to never win a title. Hamlin has made the Championship 4 four times — including the last three years in a row — and his best finish in the Cup standings was 2nd in 2010.
Kyle Larson
A surface-level examination suggests that compared to his competitors, Kyle Larson doesn’t have the experience of racing for a championship to fall back on. That isn’t necessarily true. Larson won the championship in what is now the ARCA Menards Series East in 2012, and his exile from NASCAR last year allowed him to view the race for the Cup championship from a perspective few drivers can claim.
After signing with Hendrick Motorsports late in 2020 while still suspended from NASCAR, Larson revealed Thursday that he watched last year’s championship race from Hendrick Motorsports’ team center, where team engineers were situated and giving the at-track crew data and feedback in real time.
“I got to sit there and watch the race on all the TVs, looking at all the data they had to look at, to relay it to the teams at the track,” Larson said. “That was such a unique experience for me to be able to watch it from that side of things. I feel like that could — it’s not going to benefit me, but maybe I guess being there and seeing what else goes on, because I would never know what they do in that room. I would just hear about it. I actually got to see it.”
A Cup Series driver since 2014, this is Kyle Larson’s very first appearance in the Championship 4, guaranteeing him at least his best career finish in the Cup Series standings. His previous best finish was sixth in 2019.
Chase Elliott
As the son of a local legend in Dawsonville, Georgia, Chase Elliott has been the standard-bearer for his hometown as he has ventured out into the world. And in becoming NASCAR’s biggest star, he has also become the stock car racing face of a Georgia sports renaissance. One year after Elliott won his first Cup title, the Atlanta Braves won the World Series earlier this week to snap a quarter-century dry spell. The Georgia Bulldogs, meanwhile, are currently the No. 1 ranked team in the nation in college football.
Elliott, who was still basking in the afterglow of his beloved Braves winning a championship, stated that there was no pressure on him to follow that up with another championship for the Peachtree State. But as a civic hero, he does share in the excitement of Georgians as their sports teams ascend to the best of the best.
“It’s awesome. The Dawgs and the Braves are kind of my two teams that I always pull for, and to see them having success is really cool. And then on our end, to have a great opportunity this weekend, that’s the most important thing to me,” Elliott said. “But yeah, just excited to be here and looking forward to Sunday and getting the weekend rolling. I feel like we can go out there and have a really good run.”
This is Elliott’s second appearance in the Championship 4, and he was able to win this race last year to win his first Cup Series championship. Should Chase go back-to-back and win the Cup championship again, he would surpass the number of titles won by his father, NASCAR Hall of Famer Bill Elliott, who won his lone Winston Cup title in 1988.
Martin Truex Jr.
Compared to his past trips to the title race, including when he won it all in 2017, Martin Truex Jr. has been able to make the Championship 4 by going relatively under the radar. Although he’s won four races, he has posted his lowest total of top 5 (12) and top 10 finishes (19) since 2016. And after winning three races by May, Truex went through a dry spell that lasted until he won Richmond in September.
But when evaluating Truex’s chances compared to the other title contenders, it’s important to note just where Truex’s first win this season came — Phoenix’s spring race, Truex led 64 laps including the final 25 to score his first win of the season, sparking a belief that he would have a shot at his second Cup title if he could just get to Phoenix in a position to win it.
“We’re here, so I feel really, really good. … that was a long time ago car-wise and team-wise,” Truex said. “The roles and what we have now, I don’t know where we stack up against the Hendrick cars, honestly. They’ve been really, really strong.
“We’ll see, but our car was crazy. Just the way it felt in the spring was amazing, and I’m hoping we can get that feel with even more speed this weekend.”
This year is Truex’s fifth Championship 4 appearance and the second time he has made it with Joe Gibbs Racing. Truex’s first three Championship 4 bids came with Furniture Row Racing.
