2025 is Denny Hamlin's best chance to earn coveted Brickyard 400 win

There are only two missing pieces from the Hall of Fame-worthy NASCAR career that Denny Hamlin has put together over the last two decades. 

Perhaps the most notable one is a NASCAR Cup Series championship, which Hamlin has yet to win — a result he says he's content with. 

The other is the Brickyard 400, one of NASCAR's crown jewel races. 

Hamlin, a three-time Daytona 500 winner, 2022 World 600 winner, and three-time Southern 500 winner, has won every major race NASCAR has to offer, save for the Brickyard 400. 

NASCAR's trip to the famed Indianapolis Motor Speedway has lost some of its luster over the years — as evidenced by dwindling crowds and NASCAR racing on the Indy road course from 2021 to 2023 — but it's still a race at Indy and one every driver in NASCAR wants to win.

Hamlin himself equated a win at Indianapolis to other crown jewel races he's won in the past. 

"Next to the Southern 500s, I would say," Hamlin told Frontstretch.com in 2024 when asked about where a Brickyard 400 win would rank in his career. "Obviously, it doesn't have the prestige of the (Indianapolis) 500, but I think the Southern 500, the Brickyard 400 to me is kind of equal in its prestige. It puts it right there with the Coke 600 and the Southern 500."

Hamlin has three third-place finishes at Indianapolis and led at least 18 laps in all of those races. In 2012, he started on the pole and led 27 laps before finishing sixth. 

Hamlin's most heartbreaking loss at the Brickyard came in 2020, when Hamlin was leading with seven laps to go before a flat tire sent him head-on into the turn 1 wall.