Denny Hamlin kept his Joe Gibbs Racing teammate of Martin Truex Jr. from celebrating a regular season crown early. That’s because he made up 21 points on him on Sunday via his runner-up finish at Watkins Glen. It was all predicated by netting 17 stage points (3rd, 2nd) and his fourth top three finish in the last five weeks to go from a deficit of 60 to -39 heading into Daytona next Saturday night.

“Yeah, I’m happy with my day,” Hamlin said. “It takes me a while to get going, and with McDowell there at the beginning, like he’s just ready and he’s on kill, and I’m kind of working my way into it. I just lost the lead because I looked at the 24’s back bumper the rest of the day.

“It was a fun race. Appreciate the whole Mavis guys here and Toyota and Joe Gibbs Racing for giving me a good car and giving me the tools I need to get better.”

Hamlin joked that if he can get NASCAR to give him his 25 point penalty back from comments about the Ross Chastain incident back in Phoenix on his podcast, things would be even more interesting.

“I mean, it’s doable. You’ve got to have things go your way, but yeah, if we can talk NASCAR into those 25 points they took away earlier in the season, we’d really make it interesting,” he joked.

That’s because Truex Jr. minimized the damage. Despite qualifying 19th and finishing 27th and 15th in the pair of stages, he was helped by that Chase Elliott caution on Lap 55. He had just pit on Lap 52 and that allowed him to cycle to the top 10.

He’d stay there and come away with a sixth place finish for his 10th top 7 in the last 12 races including six straight.

If those points for Hamlin came back, the gap between the two would be 14…

The thing is, Hamlin is great on superspeedways to where Truex is 0-for-77 in drafting races if you include both Atlanta events this season and last and has scored just 6 top 5’s in those 77 starts too. He has just three top 5’s in 36 Daytona tries at that.