Denny Hamlin's Incredible Streak Continues: 4 Key Takeaways From His Pocono Win

Denny Hamlin won for the third consecutive week and all from the pole at the Pocono Raceway in Long Pond, Pennsylvania.

Hamlin said in his post-race news conference that he wondered what could have been after his victory on Sunday at Pocono Raceway, which followed wins at Nashville and Michigan the previous two weeks.

“I'm just thinking, ‘Holy crap, man, we're three seconds away from having five in a row with Charlotte with the rain [ending the race before I took the lead],’” Hamlin said.

Hamlin will take four wins in his last five events, as he won the All-Star Race at Dover the week before the race at Charlotte.

Hamlin had an emotional few months prior to this season. He lost the 2025 title on a late caution and pit call, his 23XI Racing won a settlement in a brutal trial against NASCAR and his terminally ill father died in a house fire.

Hamlin credits Michael Jordan's motivational words from the offseason for his current success. Jordan addressed 23XI Racing, saying, ‘What I'm interested to see is what does Denny do. Because after what happened in Phoenix, you either pick yourself up and you respond or you fold. We’ll find out,’ said Hamlin, who drives for Joe Gibbs Racing while co-owning 23XI Racing.

Hamlin's teammate, Heather Gibbs, said, “He's a consummate professional. I think for many of us that go through a lot of tough times, being at the racetrack is our home. That's where we find the most peace and want to be back at the track. That's normal to him. I think he wanted to be back. He had records to break. He had something to prove. He's doing it now.”

With 10 races left in the regular season, Hamlin — with four points-race victories — has cut Reddick's lead in the standings to just 19 points.

The regular-season champion starts the 10-race Chase (postseason) with 2,100 points. The runner-up starts with 2,075 points.

Hamlin isn’t as strong as Reddick on road courses and the next two races are on the street course at Naval Base Coroando and the road course at Sonoma Raceway.

Reddick said, “There's a lot of tracks coming up where we’ll both be very strong at. It's just going to be a matter of who puts together the better weekend, really, to close the thing out,” after a second-place finish at Pocono.

Christopher Bell said his broken left wrist, suffered in a crash last week at Michigan, impacted him some on restarts and when he wanted to make quick maneuvers in the race at Pocono.

Bell was leading until five laps to go, as he tried to stretch fuel until Hamlin caught him. It was a huge roll of the dice and Bell didn’t feel this was a race that slipped away. The JGR driver finished 26th after having to pit for fuel on the white-flag lap.

Bell said he didn’t have any pain, and he’ll have to see how he is next week on whether he can race the 16-turn street course at Naval Base Coroando.

Brad Keselowski has fallen outside the Chase cutoff after three consecutive weeks where his race ended early because of an accident.

NASCAR heads to a special one-off event as it conducts a race at Naval Base Coronado. The 16-turn, 3.4-mile street course will be a challenge, as a new event and one with very little room for error.