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Denny Hamlin on elusive Cup title: "It's not been a drag by any means"
Denny Hamlin is rapidly becoming the Rodney Dangerfield of NASCAR drivers—he gets no respect.
Lee Spencer
Edited: Feb 1, 2018, 4:44 PM
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Even after winning 31 races and qualifying for the Playoffs all but one year from 2006 to 2017, Hamlin isn’t listed among the top-five drivers to win the Monster Energy Cup Championship on the VegasInsider.com Sportsbook. His Joe Gibbs Racing teammate, Kyle Busch, tops the list. Hamlin is ranked eighth. His odds? 15/1.
Top driver without a title?
No wonder Hamlin was at the center of debate on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio when the topic of ‘Best drivers without a championship’ came up. It’s a label he’s heard many times before. But Hamlin wasn’t even the overwhelming favorite in the category. That distinction went to Kyle Larson.
"It's been motivation,” said Hamlin on the Charlotte Motor Speedway Media Tour. “I’m always motivated to be better, and I'm just going to keep grinding as long as I can to try to win a championship, and putting in the hard work, I've definitely worked harder last year on things I can do to be better personally on the racetrack, and hopefully that pays off this year and for years to come.
“But it's not been a drag by any means. My career has been great every year. I feel like I'm better, and even though stats may not show it, I feel like I'm a better race car driver. But you just... sometimes circumstances work out for you.”
In 2017, Hamlin won two races and finished sixth in the standings for the second consecutive season. When NASCAR changed its playoff format in 2014 to a Championship 4 face-off in the season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway, Hamlin advanced but finished third—his best result since finishing second to Jimmie Johnson in 2010.
But Hamlin has yet to regain the magic he shared with crew chief Mike Ford. The pair won eight races that year and led the points for five of the 10 weeks in the Playoffs before Johnson outran him at Homestead and won the title.
Finding the magic again
Mike Wheeler has been at the helm of the No. 11 Fed Ex team—Hamlin’s third crew chief since he split with Ford in 2011. After two years together, they’ve built a solid foundation together.
"Yeah, we've been very consistently good, but we obviously need to have a great year,” Hamlin said. “We need to have a year like 2010 or '12 where we win more than five races and contend for championships. With this format, it's a little bit different, because the entire championship is based off of one race and not your whole body of work.
“I think last year we certainly had the correct champion as far as that's concerned. He performed well throughout the entire season. But it all comes down to one race now, so how can you focus so much effort in the regular season, putting yourself in a good spot, and still know that it doesn't matter if you don't perform well at Homestead. I think it's just taken us to the next level. I mean, I think we're right there. We're level 8 of 10 of where we really need to be.”
JGR's veteran driver
And Hamlin, 36, isn’t getting any younger. He’s currently the veteran of the JGR driver roster which now includes 25-year-old Daniel Suarez and 21-year-old Erik Jones along with Busch, 32. With Christopher Bell, 23, waiting in the wings and only five factory Toyota seats in the Cup Series, what’s a veteran without a championship supposed to do?
"Well, I think there's always a place, as long as Furniture Row doesn't have four cars,” Hamlin said. “There's always going to be a place that you can go. It's ultimately about sponsorship, though, right? That's the biggest ‑‑ been the biggest factor in the hiring and the firing of drivers in the last 10 years is sponsorship.
“And so you have to have it to perform. That's just the way the teams' finances is. They have to run off the bottom line, and they're going to put who they think is best for the job and financially makes sense. I think that we have four cars at JGR, but ultimately Christopher Bell is part of the TRD family, the Toyota family, and there's other Toyota teams out there."
Strong backing
Hamlin's body of work is admirable, and his strong relationship with sponsor Fed-Ex certainly offers him job security.
"Yeah, I mean, I'm in the first year of a new deal this year, so I'm very confident,” Hamlin said. “We've been together for all of my career, which is ‑‑ me and Jimmie (Johnson) are the only two guys that can say that, and that's just ‑‑ yeah, you thank your lucky stars every day you have a company like FedEx behind you.
“I saw they got named one of the top 10 most admired companies, and for good reason. They're very loyal. They do the right thing, and obviously they're in here to win a championship, and that's what I want to do, and they feel like I'm the best fit to do that for them.”
Good things come to those who wait
But there’s still that void that exists on Hamlin’s resume—the Monster Energy Cup Series title.
“Dale Earnhardt was the greatest Daytona driver for how many years before he won it? 20 years, right? He dominated every time,” Hamlin said. “Every year he was in contention. He just never won. Eventually he kept putting himself up front and in contention, and he won.
“That's the way I'm going to keep approaching my career is keep grinding on the door."
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