The Hendrick Hamlin Chevrolet Dispute Was Settled at Talladega, Not in the Quotes

Larson took the white flag in front at Talladega. A push from Austin Hill coming out of Turn 2 shoved his Chevrolet up the banking, and he fell to 11th down the backstretch with the win gone in half a lap. Then Ross Chastain picked him up from behind and pushed him back to the front, and Larson crossed the line 0.041 seconds ahead of his own teammate William Byron.

Days after the race, Denny Hamlin went on his Actions Detrimental podcast. He put Hendrick at the top of a chain of command — Hendrick, then Chevrolet, then Trackhouse, then the crew chief, then the driver — and said Chastain did what he was told. “That’s why in my mind, I don’t believe anyone will ever be Tier One with Chevy other than Hendrick,” Hamlin said, “because you control it. And so, as long as you control it, you control how that information gets shared.”

Hendrick answered on November 9, the day after Larson won the championship. “Someone said that we get all the information from Chevrolet, and that’s not the case,” he said. “All of the teams that are the three organizations get the same information at the same time, and how they decide to use it is up to them.” The three organizations are Childress, Trackhouse and Hendrick itself. “So there’s no funnel that we get it and give it to whoever else,” he said.

The Hendrick Hamlin Chevrolet dispute turns on two questions, and that answer covers one of them. The other one went unanswered. Before the race, the journalist Danielle Trotta had reported hearing that Chevrolet wanted its drivers to help Larson keep his track position and collect stage points, and Hamlin defended that report on the podcast, saying the Chevrolet drivers had to follow what the manufacturer expected. Hendrick said nothing about race-day instructions, or about who decides them when Chevrolet’s championship is on the line.

The timing sheet is where the second question gets its answer. Larson finished fourth in the opening stage and second in Stage 2, collecting 16 stage points before the final segment had even begun — the most of any driver — and the win made it a 71-point afternoon. The stage points were the plan. Cliff Daniels, the crew chief, said the team had spent the week talking about executing for stage points and getting up front at the end, and the car was fueled to reach the finish even if the race went to overtime. His teammate Byron scored 12 stage points of his own, and Chevrolets took the first six places. Larson had arrived at Talladega five points ahead of Christopher Bell and left 73 clear of Denny Hamlin.

A week later at Martinsville, the lead held. Byron won with the maximum 76 points, leading 362 of the 500 laps, while Larson finished ninth with 28 points and no stage points after being lapped in the opening stage. Hamlin started from pole and finished sixth; Bell finished tenth. Bell took seven points out of the lead and Hamlin three, and Larson went to the finale 70 clear of Hamlin. Bell knew where the title had gone: “We didn’t lose the championship by any means today. We lost the championship a couple of races earlier.”

At Homestead, Larson needed nine points. He took seven of them in the first stage, finishing fourth, and NASCAR told his crew chief the title was decided in the first stage. “It’s done? … Well that was anticlimactic,” Larson said. He finished 12th, 49 points ahead of Bell and 56 ahead of Hamlin. His Talladega afternoon alone was worth 71 points, more than the 56 that decided the championship.

This has happened before, with the same names. At Martinsville in 2024, Chastain and Austin Dillon ran side by side behind Byron’s No. 24 Chevrolet for the final 10 laps, a blockade that kept Byron in the Championship 4 by a single point over Bell. Bell said his race had been fixed, and manipulated by Chevrolet. NASCAR penalized Chastain, Dillon and Bubba Wallace under its rule against race manipulation: $100,000 fines and 50 points each, with crew chiefs, spotters and executives suspended for the finale. Chastain’s spotter that day was Brandon McReynolds, the same spotter who told him to push Larson at Talladega.

The building at the center of the accusation sits beside the team it is accused of favoring. General Motors spent $45 million on its Charlotte Technical Center in Concord, a 130,000-square-foot facility with three driver simulators and an aero development center that opened in 2022, and Hendrick’s campus is next door. In 2020, Hendrick and Childress formed a joint venture to build one common Chevrolet engine. Hamlin’s name for the building is blunter: “That Chevy Technical Center is Hendrick Motorsports Performance Center. That’s what it is.” Chevrolet does not disclose exactly what technical data each of its teams receives, or when.

The tape has its own limits. NASCAR checked the throttle data from Byron, Ricky Stenhouse Jr. and Cole Custer after Talladega and found no evidence that any of them deliberately lifted to let Larson through; Ryan Blaney said Larson had simply put on a huge run. A push at a superspeedway is drafting; a lift is something else, and the throttle data is how NASCAR tells them apart. The manufacturers’ title went the other way: Toyota won it, its first since 2019, on 16 wins from its two teams. Hamlin gave Larson the point himself: “the 5 car has earned his right to be the number one guy that everyone else has to look out for, even if you’re not actually associated in the same race team as he is.”

The fans split three ways. “Manufacturer Orders are pretty normal at Daytona and Talladega until the final few laps,” wrote BeefInGR on Reddit’s NASCAR forum after the race, “but mostly just for organizing pit cycles since the draft is such a big deal.” Another fan, IcedCoffey, read Hendrick’s answer as a dodge: “Yes, Chevy’s info is shared to all teams. Now, Hendrick’s info, where 99% of the important stuff is, is not. I don’t see this as disagreeing with Hamlin’s statement, but more of deflecting.” A third, tsrshr14fan, drew the line where the dispute lives: “The only thing that should be off limits to OEMs is telling their drivers to help each other on the racetrack at all costs, under threat of penalty or sanction.” Oneilcruzsucksass, on the thread carrying Hendrick’s reply, answered it in three sentences: “It’s just the larger teams still dump more money into research to find that edge. Why wouldn’t Chevy want more Chevy wins no matter which team it was? The conspiracy theory is dumb.” A separate thread about the championship kept coming back to the points format instead. The argument in the stands runs on different lines: the fans accept the help and argue about the orders, while Hamlin and Hendrick argue about the information.

Larson was the first driver to clinch a championship before the end of the season finale since Matt Kenseth in 2003. Toyota won the manufacturers’ championship, its first since 2019.