For most of its history, the Brickyard 400 belonged to NASCAR royalty. Jeff Gordon won it five times, Jimmie Johnson four, Kevin Harvick three. When the Cup Series returns to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway oval on Sunday for the 30th running of the crown jewel (2 p.m. ET, TNT Sports), it does so without a reigning master of the place.
Only three drivers in the field — Brad Keselowski, Kyle Larson and defending winner Bubba Wallace — have ever kissed the bricks, and each has done it just once. As NASCAR.com's Pat DeCola framed it: "The crown remains. The king does not."
That leaves one of the sport's most exclusive prizes unusually open. It also leaves it dangling in front of the one contender who wants it most: Denny Hamlin.
The Joe Gibbs Racing driver leads the championship and is the winningest active driver in the Cup Series, with three Daytona 500s, three Southern 500s and a Coca-Cola 600 to his name. The Brickyard is the one crown jewel missing from the set. Sunday marks his 18th start in the race; his best result remains one of four third-place finishes, the most recent coming last year after he crashed in qualifying and started 39th before charging back through the field.
Asked what completing the collection would mean, Hamlin has not hidden the pull of it. "It's tough to say what it would mean until it actually happens," he said. "Adding another crown jewel would be big, and then to have had them all swept... the names are very prestigious on that list, so it would certainly mean a lot to me. It would just be another feather in the cap... highly motivated, just need things to go our way once."
Bookmakers agree he is the man to beat. DraftKings opened Hamlin as the +350 favourite, ahead of Tyler Reddick at +550. Reddick, who won this year's Daytona 500, is chasing history of his own: victory on Sunday would make him just the fourth driver ever to take the Daytona 500 and the Brickyard 400 in the same season. Ryan Blaney and Larson are next at +700, with William Byron at +900 and Wallace, the defending winner, a +1200 longshot.
Larson looms as the quiet threat. His 2024 win, when the race first returned to the oval in the Next Gen era, and a runner-up finish last year give him a startling average finish of 1.5 on the current configuration.
History suggests Sunday matters beyond the trophy. The Brickyard winner has gone on to claim the championship in the same season nine times, and 11 of the race's 17 different winners are Cup champions. But the modern version is far harder to script: six of the last eight editions have gone to overtime, including each of the last three, and the driver who led the most laps has won just three of the last 10.
There is a second prize on the line, too. Sunday stages the final of NASCAR's In-Season Challenge, with Blaney (-340) facing underdog Todd Gilliland (+230) for a $1 million bonus. Gilliland has finished sixth in each of the last two Brickyard 400s and beat Blaney in last year's race, giving the No. 34 a puncher's chance in a duel that adds another layer to an already loaded afternoon at the Racing Capital of the World.
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*Originally published on [Motorsports Global](https://motorsports.global/article/brickyard-400-wide-open-as-hamlin-chases-his-missing-jewel). Visit for full coverage.*