Denny Hamlin is battling out on two fronts at the same time. He’s desperately trying to end his championship drought, and similarly, his team, 23XI Racing, is taking NASCAR to court by filing an anti-trust lawsuit. It’s far from an ideal condition for Hamlin to keep his focus on the racetrack and the playoffs. This has led many to believe that this off-track drama would prove detrimental to his championship run.

Up next, he faces the daunting task of superspeedway racing at Talladega. And his recent visit in the spring ended on a DNF. In the Next Gen era, drafting tracks hasn’t necessarily been Denny Hamlin’s strong suit. However, when the fall race at Talladega is concerned, Hamlin looks to have churned out a consistently good performance, which has often gone unnoticed.

Keep an eye out for Denny Hamlin at Talladega

The #11 team seems to have lost all the momentum they generated during the regular season. Having crawled their way in the Round of 12 races, courtesy of the Bristol race, they were unable to get the ball rolling at Kansas last Sunday. Despite a good race car and overall speed, constant troubles on the pit road cost Hamlin a shot at winning the race.

It’s fair to say that the JGR star has got a lot on his plate, and his emotions got the better of him after a P8 finish at Kansas. “Not in it mentally. I can tell you that.” With a buffer of just 11 points going into this weekend, Hamlin isn’t expected to grab the bull by the horns and grab a win. But this isn’t out of bounds given his track record in the fall Talladega races.

In the last eight fall Talladega races, Hamlin has an average finish of 4. This does include his win from the year 2020. In fact, his last two fall races have ended with top-5 finishes. What’s more fascinating is that his worst finish during this time frame is P7, which came in 2021. Although he might be distracted or caught up in off-track chaos, he can bank on his record and deliver the goods for the #11 team.

Hamlin knows that racing for stage points alone won’t be enough to secure his advance to the next rounds. Therefore, in trying to stage a comeback run, he is looking to go all out this weekend. “We don’t have the buffer entering these rounds what we did before. So you use the numbers to try to help you make the best decisions possible, but I think the best avenue for us going forward is just to go all out.” He said this in a press conference ahead of the race.

It’s not just Denny Hamlin who can script a comeback run. The Fords in general are good at drafting tracks, but Ryan Blaney and Brad Keselowski are ones to watch out for.

Ryan Blaney and Brad Keselowski could play spoiler to Hamlin’s redemption run

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The Penske drivers are known to turn up during the playoffs like they have done in the last two seasons. Blaney has already switched gears and has found himself contesting for wins in the playoffs. Apart from the disappointing end to the Watkins Glen race, the #12 car has been pretty solid, with two top 5s and a top 10 finish in the four playoff races. However, Talladega is where Blaney has thrived in the past; he is the defending race winner from last year and has two runner-up finishes in his last four starts on the 2.66-mile tri-oval track in Alabama.

Remember the 2023 YellaWood 500?

In what marked Kevin Harvick’s final race at Talladega, Denny Hamlin faced his own challenges, falling a lap down and battling to earn the free pass. His struggles further culminated when Carson Hocevar passed him at the end of Stage 2, denying him the position. Meanwhile, Ryan Blaney took the spotlight, crossing the finish line first and beating Harvick by a razor-thin margin of 0.012 seconds. It was Blaney’s third career victory at Talladega, adding another thrilling chapter to his superspeedway success.

“I think you appreciate these things more because they are so hard to win, such an up in the air thing, you never know if it’s going to work out for you or not. You have to really appreciate whenever you can win here. Really, really fortunate we’ve been lucky enough to win here three times,” Blaney said. So you can expect another appreciation from the defending champion.

Another driver who can bank on his experience to excel this weekend is RFK Racing’s Brad Keselowski. The veteran owner-driver is the winningest active driver at Talladega, with six wins to his name. He did come agonizingly close to winning the spring race, finishing second behind the race winner Tyler Reddick. And, he did win Stage 2 during the last YellaWood 500. Although a win by a non-playoff driver would act as the spoiler for those racing for a championship. Keselowski wouldn’t mind snagging his second win of the 2024 season on his favored racetrack.

Who do you think is the frontrunner to win the Talladega race? And what do you make of Hamlin’s chances based on his impressive statistics for the fall event?