“He's certainly a threat” - Denny Hamlin sees Chase Elliott as NASCAR Championship threat after his Texas Cup win

After Chase Elliott won Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series race at Texas Motor Speedway, his fellow driver, Denny Hamlin, believes that Elliott is back as a championship contender.

The AutoTrader EchoPark Automotive 400 victory ended a frustrating 42-race winless streak for Elliott, dating back to the 2022 season at Talladega Superspeedway. The win locked him into the playoffs and will boost his confidence going further into the 2024 season.

Speaking about Elliott’s outing at Texas after the race, Hamlin said that the Texas win could be a rise for the #9 Hendrick Motorsports driver and how this win would bring him back into championship contention.

Denny Hamlin admitted that the 2020 NASCAR Cup Series champion has shown improvement as the season progressed, and believes he is a championship threat after the Texas Cup win, as the #9 driver has the capability to win races and even championships.

“I think they’ve slowly but surely gotten better, really as the season’s gone on. It seems like there’s a couple of organizations dominating right now, and he’s part of one of them.

"And this is certainly what he’s been capable of for a long time. He’s certainly a threat for sure, because he’s done it before,” Hamlin said in a post-race interview with Frontstretch reporter Stephen Stumpf.

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“I just got loose and spun out” – Denny Hamlin on his late race spin at Texas

Three-time Daytona 500 winner Hamlin’s hope of winning his third race of the season ended in a late race spin at Texas Motor Speedway.

Denny Hamlin grabbed the lead on lap 245 but lost it to Elliott on lap 260. With just a few laps left in the race, Hamlin made an aggressive push while battling for the lead with Elliott. In doing so, he lost control of his car and spun out, crashing into the wall. JGR driver couldn’t recover from it and finished P30—his worst result of the season.

“It just got loose up in turn 3. It’s something I’ve been fighting really kind of all day. And then, when you got to push it the most on a green-white-checkered, I knew that the likely scenario is I wasn’t going to make it out of the corner with as much speed as I was carrying.

"But it’s trying to go for the win, so I just got loose and spun out,” Hamlin said on late-race spin while battling for the win with Elliott (via Frontstretch).

With 307 points, Denny Hamlin stands third in the Cup Series points table after nine races.