Kevin Harvick raises eyebrows in a blunt verdict on Denny Hamlin’s NASCAR future: “He’s running out of opportunities”

Denny Hamlin is arguably one of the greatest drivers in the modern era of NASCAR who has yet to win a championship. Former NCS champion-turned-broadcaster Kevin Harvick recently opened up about Hamlin's future while discussing the 1-2 finish for Joe Gibbs Racing at the Phoenix Raceway. Harvick hinted at the fact that not only is Denny Hamlin running out of opportunities to win the championship but also winning more races.

Hamlin has 54 Cup Series wins in his two-decade-long career and was tantalizingly close to his 55th victory at Phoenix. The JGR driver had been running in the top 10 for most of the race and was in the battle for the lead of the race with his teammate Christopher Bell after the final restart.

The #11 and #20 cars were side-by-side entering the final turn of the race but Bell ran Hamlin up the racetrack at the exit and outran him to the finish line. Bell ended up winning the race with a 0.049-second margin over Denny Hamlin. Talking to his co-hosts Mamba Smith and Kaitlyn Vincie on Kevin Harvick's Happy Hour podcast, the 2014 Cup Series champion explained (19:20 onwards):

"I've been in that position that Denny is in. When you know that number is clicking down and you're going through another race that you had an opportunity to win, it's not always that we have next year, right? And Denny's running out of opportunities to not only win a championship, but to win races, and he wants to win races, he's capable of winning races..."

He also remarked that if Hamlin had won that race, he would have silenced the negative talks surrounding his future with Joe Gibbs Racing and the recent shake-up within his team (losing his long-time sponsor FedEx and his crew chief Chris Gabehart).

"As you get closer to the end and people know that you're thinking about retiring, it becomes harder to get good people, it becomes harder to get motivated people... and all the things that go with that. Denny winning that race would have completely quieted all the noise about everything that is going on with his new team and new scenarios and not having won a race and all that talk," Harvick added.

Hamlin’s second-place result at Phoenix has shot him up 10 spots in the drivers’ standings with 110 points under his belt.

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Denny Hamlin fails to understand what the #20 team is doing differently

Christopher Bell entered the Shriners Children’s 500 after back-to-back victories in Atlanta and COTA. He had not won a race in the 19 starts before Atlanta. However, he beat his teammate Denny Hamlin to win his third consecutive race in 2025.

After the race, Hamlin was asked to explain whether circumstances favored his teammate, or if Bell had done something he hadn’t done in the past 20 weeks. Responding to this, Hamlin explained that it was hard to understand what had suddenly changed for the #20 team, but he acknowledged that whatever they were doing was working well for them.

“It's so hard for me to kind of analyze it from the outside because you know, I am not embedded at their team as much as I am with my own team, right? I mean, obviously you see a gain in performance there, but you know, it could be a lot of different things," Denny Hamlin shared.

Is our car better? Is it circumstances in a speedway race or a road course race, or this one? I guess he probably dominated, right? So I don't know, circumstance or not, three in a row is pretty impressive and whatever they're doing is working well," he added.

Denny Hamlin will be back in racing action on Sunday, March 16, for the Pennzoil 400 at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway.