Denny Hamlin was asked a direct question after his win at Michigan in June: is this season better than his rookie year in 2010? Better than 2019? Better than his three-win 2020 campaign? He nodded before he answered out loud. “Uh-huh.”
He is 45 years old, in his 22nd full-time Cup season, and by his own account driving better than he ever has. The number backing that claim is blunt: his average finish this year sits roughly four spots ahead of where it has run over the rest of his career, a gap that in a field this deep separates a good season from a historic one.
“Just Experience”
Hamlin was asked how a driver gets faster at 45 than he was at 30. His answer had nothing to do with reflexes.
“Just experience,” Hamlin said. “I was talking to Ty Gibbs before the race, and he was like, ‘how many starts do you have?’ Probably 40, 30-something, 40. He’s like, man, ‘I’m at the point now where I feel like I know what I need’ and ‘I know what I’m looking for.’ And I said, yeah, imagine having four times as many starts as you have.”
He kept going, describing the version of racecraft that only shows up after two decades of it. “That’s the advantage I have every single week, is that he feels comfortable where he’s at, but just add another 15 years of experience, and you just know the transitions of the track and what happens when it gets cloudy, what happens when it gets sunny, what happens when the wind is this direction, that direction. All those things you just learn over time. It’s why we have the upper hand right now.”
Toyota has been strong across the board this year, and Hamlin is quick to credit crew chief Chris Gayle and the No. 11 team rather than claim the season as a solo act. But he is also out-driving three other Joe Gibbs Racing cars and three 23XI Racing entries that share his equipment and his manufacturer, teams that know exactly what setup Gayle is running. The separation, week after week, is coming from the driver’s seat.
A Five Year Deal, Half in Jest
Team owner Joe Gibbs has watched this version of Hamlin up close, and he does not talk about it like a coach managing an aging asset.
“I know you guys, and all of us, we know how tough NASCAR is,” Gibbs said. “We know these are the best people in the world racing these cars, and Denny doing this at this stage of his career, it might be the most exceptional thing he’s done. Think about it. Most athletes, they get to a point where they have everything they need financially and they just lose their drive and passion. What we’re witnessing with Denny is the opposite of that. He’s full-blown into the simulator, works extremely hard in our meetings. He means so much to the other young drivers. Just hearing him describe what happens during the race, the way he looks at things, he’s invaluable, really.”
Gibbs has floated the idea of a five-year extension beyond Hamlin’s expected retirement after 2027, a line delivered with a laugh but repeated with enough consistency that it no longer sounds like a joke. “I joke with him, we have a five-year deal ready, but really, no, I’m dead serious,” Gibbs said. “From my standpoint, any athlete that is really performing like that, I’ve had athletes at different times in football come to me and say, hey coach, should I come back and try it, and I always give the same advice. When you’re still performing that way, you never look back in life. I’ll probably say the same thing to Denny.” Asked if he would ever truly let Hamlin walk away, Gibbs offered one more line. “Never say never is a good way to put it, yes.”
Hamlin laughed off the five-year figure as an exaggeration on Gibbs’s part. But he did not laugh off the underlying question. “I think if, and that’s a big if, like I’m at this point and this fast at this point next year, it would be a tough, tough decision,” Hamlin said. “That’s not saying that I would, but it would be a tough decision because, again, I’m planning for the downfall that I know will come.”
Sixty Three Wins, and One That Meant More Than the Rest
The number itself carries extra significance this year in a way it did not before. Hamlin’s Michigan win pulled him level with Kyle Busch at 63 career Cup victories, a milestone he marked with a quiet tribute rather than a celebration, wearing Busch’s number on his cap and carrying a flag in his honor after Busch’s death earlier this year. Busch and Hamlin had raced against each other for two decades, rivals as often as friends, and Hamlin has said little publicly about what tying that number meant to him beyond the gesture itself.
Dale Earnhardt sits at 76 wins, a total Hamlin once treated as a real target. Not anymore. “It was certainly a goal to get to 63 or 64 as of a couple years ago, or a year ago, because I knew that would put me by myself in ninth,” Hamlin said. “I ain’t getting to eighth, so what am I doing? I’m content. If I quit tomorrow, I swear I will feel no more gratified than if I go out there and win 72 races. It makes no difference. Nobody cares. You’ll be forgotten within six months of when you’re not here. I might as well just enjoy life while I’m still somewhat young and be able to be there a little bit more for the kids and what they’re doing.”
That is not resignation. It is closer to clarity, from a driver who spent years chasing a number and decided the number stopped being the point.
The Chase for the Regular Season Title
None of that reflection has slowed him down. With the regular season winding toward its close, Hamlin is chasing Tyler Reddick for the top seed heading into the playoffs, sitting roughly 51 points back after Reddick crashed out of the same Michigan incident that nearly collected Hamlin too.
“Listen, I knew the only way we ever could catch him is he was going to have to have bad luck,” Hamlin said. “I said it weeks ago. He had bad luck today. We were in the same wreck. We were turned around backwards. Luckily, no one hit us in Turn 1. Our car wasn’t very good, and we just overcame it. I think he’s going to stretch it out at San Diego, Sonoma. I still think he’s in a really good place, but if we keep doing this, it will keep them interesting and honest, for sure.”
It is the kind of measured, respectful needle Hamlin has thrown for years, the tone of a driver who has outlasted enough rivals to know better than to declare a fight over before it is.
What Comes After
Hamlin says the downfall he is planning for is not hypothetical. He already feels the body pain that comes with two decades of racing. What has not slipped, he says, are his eyesight and his reaction time, the two things that actually determine when a driver has to stop.
“It’s just the other two things have remained really sharp,” he said.
For now, that leaves Hamlin in a strange, enviable position: the oldest driver in serious championship contention, out-performing teammates half his age, balancing a retirement date he set for himself years ago against a version of his own driving that keeps getting better instead of worse. Joe Gibbs has made his preference clear. Hamlin has not.
Six races remain before the playoffs begin, and every one of them adds another data point to a decision that, by Hamlin’s own admission, he has not made yet.
Sources:
- Yahoo Sports / Motorsport.com
- WCYB
- Frontstretch
