Denny Hamlin Can Make History for Joe Gibbs Racing with a Bristol Win

Denny Hamlin heads into Sunday's Food City 500 at Bristol, a race he won a season ago, on a two-race winning streak and with a shot to reach a historical accomplishment for his Joe Gibbs Racing team. | Sam Navarro-Imagn Images

After back-to-back wins at Martinsville Speedway and Darlington Raceway, Denny Hamlin heads into the Food City 500 at Bristol Motor Speedway, a race he won a season ago, with a chance at three consecutive NASCAR Cup Series wins.

If the Joe Gibbs Racing driver can pull off the feat, he'll join his JGR teammate Christopher Bell as the second driver to accomplish three victories in a row through just the opening nine races of the 2025 season. And it would mark the first time since 2018 that multiple drivers recorded a three-race win streak in a single season in the NASCAR Cup Series.

Kevin Harvick (Atlanta, Las Vegas, Phoenix), Kyle Busch (Texas, Bristol, Richmond), and Brad Keselowski (Darlington, Indianapolis, Las Vegas) each recorded three consecutive wins during the 2018 NASCAR Cup Series season.

While the Joe Gibbs Racing team, which came into the 2025 season on an 18-race losing streak, has picked up five wins through the opening eight races of the campaign, the team now has a chance to do something that no other organization has ever done before in NASCAR Cup Series history, which is to have two different drivers rattle off three consecutive wins within the same season.

The crazy thing about the potential historic march for Joe Gibbs Racing is that Hamlin doesn't feel the team has even begun to hit its stride as far as dominating races is concerned this year.

"I don’t think that we’ve been, short of [Martinsville], last week was domination, but there hasn’t been a lot of dominating Gibbs wins this year," Hamlin said in his post-race press conference at Darlington. "Last week was one of the only ones."

Hamlin continued, "You see Bell at Phoenix was dominating. I see it as we had two times that we had the best car, and won the race. Then we’ve had other things kind of just fall our way."

But even though they haven't dominated each and every week, Hamlin and the Joe Gibbs Racing team are thrilled that they are running consistently inside of the top-five, and keeping themselves in a position to capitalize late in races.

"That’s really what our job is, on days like this, to just hang around," Hamlin explained. "When you don’t have a race-winning car, don’t stuff it in the fence trying to get second when third is a pretty good day because anything can happen."

As far as Hamlin's No. 11 team goes, the driver feels that with the overall performance of the team's car, driver, and pit crew, Hamlin is expecting to be able to return to victory lane often this season.

"Now, like I said to Chris Gayle, if we can win races where we have a seventh to 10th place car, I feel good about going out there and executing when we’ve got the best car," Hamlin said. "Obviously our pit crew is well and capable of keeping us up front. I can still do it. I can still do it at a high level. I like our outlook to win a lot of races this year."

Hamlin's next win very likely could come this weekend at Bristol Motor Speedway. Not only did he win last year's Spring race at the 0.533-mile short track, but Hamlin has two wins and three top-five finishes at the concrete high-banked oval.

In all, Hamlin has four career wins at Bristol Motor Speedway in 35 career starts at the facility, three of them have come in his last eight starts. And overall, Hamlin has led 1,199 laps at Bristol, which ranks the third-highest total of any track Hamlin has competed at in his NASCAR Cup Series career.

Hamlin has led laps in six of his last eight starts at Bristol Motor Speedway, and over that span, he has notched 581 laps led, which equates to 48.5% of his career laps led total at the track. At 44 years old, it feels like Hamlin's ability to compete at a high level at Bristol is like a fine wine, it only improves with age.

While Hamlin has never won three NASCAR Cup Series races in a row throughout his illustrious career, if he can secure his third consecutive win this weekend, it's certainly not inconceivable to expect Hamlin to have a shot at four straight wins.

The NASCAR Cup Series will head to Talladega Superspeedway next weekend for the Jack Link's 500. Hamlin is one of the greatest superspeedway racers in NASCAR history, as he has two career wins at Talladega, and is a three-time Daytona 500 champion.

Hamlin was in position to win the Daytona 500 in February, but was crashed from the race lead on the final lap of the Great American Race.