Denny Hamlin is working his way into 2026 NASCAR Cup season
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Denny Hamlin hasn’t lost his competitive edge. Simply put, it has been dormant for a few months—and understandably so.
In 2025, Hamlin, 45, made a wholehearted effort to win the NASCAR Cup Series championship. His preparation was superb, and so was his performance in the title event at Phoenix Raceway.
Hamlin led 208 of 319 laps, won the second stage and was three laps away from a dominant victory when the championship was snatched from his grasp by an untimely caution.
After that disappointment came heartache, when Hamlin’s father, Dennis Hamlin, died from injuries suffered in a housefire on Dec. 28. His mother, Mary Lou Hamlin, was severely injured in the blaze.
As a consequence, Hamlin is working his way into the current season, but he’s confident he’ll be ready by the time the new 10-race Chase championship format arrives in September.
“We’re kind of getting back into the swing of things,” Hamlin said Wednesday during DAYTONA 500 Media Day interviews at Daytona International Speedway. “Certainly, would be lying if I said I was as highly motivated as I have been in years past, but I think that—I said it last week—it would just take some time.
“And I think that every day at the race track is certainly getting there. I know I’m way too competitive to just go through the motions. So, as we get on the racetrack, go through practices and qualifying, we’re slowly getting there.”
Recently, Hamlin has leaned heavily on team owner Joe Gibbs—never more so than the night his father died.
“I mean, Joe beat me to the hospital the night of,” Hamlin said. “The guy is just unbelievable in how he is as a leader, and obviously he has been through it (with the loss of sons J.D. Gibbs and Coy Gibbs).
“So, my connection really on that personal level is more so with Joe, and it’s always been that way since he kind of took over as my at-track dad.”
No doubt Hamlin’s competitive nature will kick in on Sunday when he tries to win his fourth DAYTONA 500, a number only Richard Petty (seven victories) and Cale Yarborough (four victories) have accomplished. —Reid Spencer
Connor Zilisch aware of high expectations in DAYTONA 500 debut
Connor Zilisch has won in every kind of car he’s competed in—a road racing phenom who hoisted a 24 Hour of Daytona class winner’s trophy before he could get his legal driver’s license.
Last year he transitioned to fulltime NASCAR racer and won a NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series-best 10 races and set a record with 18 consecutive top-five finishes, capping the season with Sunoco Rookie of the Year honors as the championship runner-up.
It’s quite a lead-in to 2026, when Zilisch will now contend in his rookie NASCAR Cup Series season driving the No. 88 Trackhouse Racing Chevrolet. He makes his full-time debut in Sunday’s DAYTONA 500 at Daytona International Speedway, a place he recalls coming four years ago as a fan, not even knowing anyone in the garage area well enough to secure a pit pass.
A generational-talent, Zilisch faces not only the challenge of competing in the sport’s greatest race against its greatest talents, but he also competes under high and heavy expectation that come with his all his past success.
But the perpetually good-natured 19-year-old Charlotte native smiles gratefully and promises his goal is to finish all the laps and hopefully come away with a top-10 in his debut in the Great American Race. Should he win, Zilisch would become the youngest winner in DAYTONA 500 history.
“I appreciate the excitement, I think it’s really cool that there’s a lot of people excited to watch how I’m going to do this season, whether it’s fans or media,” said Zilisch, who finished 27th in the 2025 NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series season opener at Daytona, after being collected in a late-race multi-car accident.
“I do think it sometimes gets a little outlandish… a lot of people maybe expecting a lot of me in my first year. I don’t think people realize how big of a jump it is from Saturday to Sunday. But I try not to pay too much attention to it. I know what my personal goals are throughout the year. I know what I want to accomplish and my long-term goals. I find it cool mostly.”
His approach is unfailingly thoughtful.
“There’s a lot of things that can happen out of your control here. And I think for me, I’m just most excited to enjoy it all, whether it’s media day today. Usually I dread these things, but I came in with a positive mindset today that I’m going to have fun and I’m going to enjoy it, and I think that goes for the entire weekend.” –Holly Cain
Chase Elliott: New NASCAR championship format is aptly named
Count Chase Elliott among the NASCAR Cup Series drivers who are thrilled by the return to the 10-race Chase to determine the champion—and not because his name happens to match the name of the format.
“Motorsports is just a little different, and I think we’ve we spent an awful lot of time trying to be like everybody else,” Elliott said on Wednesday during DAYTONA 500 Media Day at Daytona International Speedway. “I’m really proud of leadership of saying, ‘Hey look, let’s be us and let’s go do our own thing.’
“The Chase format was really unlike anything else in sports, that I could remember at that time, when it came out. Very genuine, very original. I think it fits. It never felt like a playoff to me, and not because of my name, but ‘The Chase’ does sound good. It sounds like racing. It sounds like a racing term.”
Elliott also believes the 10-race scenario could reward the sort of consistency he has shown in recent years. In both 2024 and 2025, Elliott finished on the lead lap in 32 of 36 points races.
“I like our chances, for sure,” said Elliott, the Cup Series’ perennial Most Popular Driver. “I think that you’re going to have to perform at a really high level for 10 weeks. There will be more room in there for you to have, I don’t want to say a bad day—you might get away with one bad day—but you’re going to have to perform at a really high level.
“That was the case before, but I like the fact that it gives it time for things to come out in the wash. You know, if you have one bad pit stop, it doesn’t ruin your championship at Phoenix. That was the part that always was difficult from my perspective. Whether I was a part of it or if I was watching it, (it) was kind of hard.” —Reid Spencer
Kyle Busch ready for challenge in 21st DAYTONA 500 start
Kyle Busch is a two-time NASCAR Cup Series champion who has won more races in the sport’s three national series (232) than any driver in history. But the 40-year-old Las Vegas native lines up for his 21st green flag in Sunday’s DAYTONA 500 amazingly still looking for his first win in the Great American Race.
His statistics at the 2.5-mile speedway are certainly good enough. He’s won in all three major series—the NASCAR Cup Series (summer, 2008), the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series (2007) and the CRAFTSMAN Truck Series (2014).
Of Busch’s 539 laps led in the NASCAR Cup Series at Daytona, 63 percent of them (342) have come in the DAYTONA 500. Yet his best finish came in his 2019 series championship season, when he finished runner-up to Denny Hamlin – a blink-of-the-eye .138-second behind.
He’s had five top-10 finishes in all, including a third-place showing in 2016—a race also won by his then-Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Hamlin.
“Coming to Daytona, as you’re coming in (to your career) maybe four-five years in, you’re a young guy, you’re pumped up and amped for the DAYTONA 500,” Busch said. “As you go on through the years, you’ve got to figure out a way to be in the right ‘mind place’ and figure out how to go out there, excel and be in the right place at the right time (to win).
“We’ve seen it here the last couple years. You can be leading coming off Turn 2 and not make it back to the start-finish line. You can be running fifth, or seventh or 11th and be the one that wins the race. It’s just a matter of having it be your way.
“Being able to win Daytona, that’s obviously sort of the last box to check in my career, and getting that done would be a lot of fun,” he added, breaking into a wide grin. “We’d celebrate that really, really big.” –Holly Cain
So far, so good for Brad Keselowski’s return from broken leg
Brad Keselowski arrived for his DAYTONA 500 Media Day interviews walking with a cane to support his right leg, which has been healing from a broken femur.
It wasn’t just any cane, mind you. This one bore sponsorship stickers relating to his No. 6 Roush Fenway Keselowski Ford.
“I knew I was probably going to get picked on a little bit,” said Keselowski, who on Feb. 9 was cleared to race in the DAYTONA 500 after skipping the Cook Out Clash at Bowman Gray Stadium. “So, I might as well just at some point own it. I won’t say it (the decals) was my idea, but I actually thought it was a good one.”
Keselowski broke his leg by slipping on ice during a family ski vacation in mid-December. He explained that the injury was far more severe than the broken ankle he suffered in a wreck at Road Atlanta in 2011.
As he was lying on the ice after the recent accident, Keselowski was beset with a grim thought.
“When I was laying on the ground and I was completely immobile immediately after I broke my leg, what was going through my mind was like, ‘Oh my God.’ Like, think about the soldiers in the Civil War,” Keselowski said. “Like, they just would cut their leg off right here.
“And I understood why they would do it, because it hurt so bad. It was by far the worst pain I’ve ever went through. I get why they would bring out the hacksaw. There was a part of me that was like, that might actually feel better.”
Keselowski expects to be able to drive at Daytona, though David Ragan will stand by as a relief driver. Less certain is whether he can handle the rigors of the Circuit of The Americas road course on Mar. 1.
As a consequence, sports car star Joey Hand already has been enlisted as a backup for that race. —Reid Spencer
Shane van Gisbergen cites progress on oval tracks as top priority
A new car number and a full season of experience capped by a Playoff debut in the NASCAR Cup Series certainly have Trackhouse Racing’s Shane Van Gisbergen feeling optimistic about the 2026 season.
Not surprisingly, the former three-time Australian Supercars champion has spent much of his time in the sport adjusting to the oval racing he hadn’t experienced before. He earned five wins in 2025 (second only to veteran Denny Hamlin)—all on road courses—and claimed the Sunoco Rookie of the Year award.
This season, the New Zealander obviously would like to up his oval game to more closely match his road course prowess and seems optimistic about what he learned in his rookie season. His only top-10 finish on an oval was a 10th place run at Kansas last September, but he was strong last week on a short track in the Cook Out Clash at Bowman Gray Stadium.
“You just learn what you want and need from a car,” said Van Gisbergen, whose Chevrolet will carry his long-time No. 97 beginning this season. “My driving style was very different to most, I guess. The way I make the car work or want it to work is very different to others.
“We noticed a lot of trends which took a while to get everyone to adjust to. I adjusted a bit, but now we’re sort of coming my way a bit, which has kind of helped me. It’s interesting. The cars are set up so different to what I’m used to, and I’m still trying to understand what I need or want from the car.”
As for racing on the big tracks such as Daytona (2.5 miles) and Talladega Superspeedway (2.66 miles) Van Gisbergen says he enjoys the style but acknowledges it’s a whole different ballgame.
“I’m still learning and trying to make friends, I guess. People leave you for no reason, or you do something wrong and lose the trust of people. It takes a while to understand how to put your car in the right place.”
“You don’t really have an influence on it. You just drive as fast as you can, close to the line as you can. But the preparation is very different. On road courses, I’m more involved in setup with what I want. On the ovals I’m just kind of learning and trying to build a notebook.
“In these races it’s about trying to understand the flow of the race, how to work with people. It’s a completely different style of racing—that’s for sure.” –Holly Cain
— NASCAR News Wire —