This Sunday’s Goodyear 400 is the NASCAR Cup Series’ annual Darlington Raceway Throwback Weekend, but last week Denny Hamlin rode the wayback machine and traveled back in time by roughly 15 years. The driver for Joe Gibbs Racing was forced to be his blunt, rude self on the frontstretch after winning the Cook Out 400 by showcasing some old-school domination around the small, constrained Martinsville Speedway. Fans probably realized he had won for the first time in a while, after a 31-race drought that dated back 11 months to Dover, when he climbed out of his No. 11 Toyota to applause. Then he managed to turn the applause back into the traditional jeers.
Following the cheering, Hamlin was all fluttery and brandished a huge flag that proclaimed “11 Against the World” in the color of Carolina Blue. This caused some catcalls. Despite the flag-waving and trash-talking, Denny’s performance on Sunday raised the question: Is the 44-year-old Hamlin back in the latter stages of a Hall of Fame career? That’s the Denny we know and either love or hate—there isn’t much room for middle ground there. In 2024, he won three times in the first 12 races that went through the end of April, but he was a non-factor the rest of the way and again failed to earn his first Cup title.
He has a chance to win this week’s Goodyear 400 at the storied Darlington, where Hamlin is renowned for seeing and taking advantage of a distinctive turn 1 entrance. The “Too Tough to Tame” track, which has been Darlington’s reputation since its inaugural race in 1950, is where he has four career victories. Hamlin, a native of Chesterfield, Virginia, has 55 career victories, starting with the number eight, which represents his victory total from his greatest season in 2010. After his victory last week, which was one of the most comprehensive triumphs in recent memory—he led 274 of the final 275 laps and won by a commanding 4.6 seconds—at a location where he has a stellar reputation, that is his new career total.
For whatever reason, Hamlin was a well-liked choice in Martinsville. It is, after all, Hamlin on a Commonwealth short track. Part of the truth, though, was that although Hamlin had excelled at the half-mile track, winning three in a row in 2009 and 2010, he had not found the checkers there since late March 2015, when he ran the flat track rudderless for 19 races. After the victory in Martinsville, Denny Hamlin hopes to win in Darlington.. “That’s old-school Denny Hamlin,” Harvick stated during his appearance on the podcast “Kevin Harvick’s Happy Hour” “This is a significant moment for Denny… He understood that this would disturb the rest of his life, so he brought in Chris Gayle.
“That says a lot about who he is as a driver and a leader.” This weekend at Darlington, Hamlin will race the red-themed Sport Clips paint scheme in honor of recent NASCAR Hall of Fame inductee Carl Edwards. While the colors may transport us to a different era, the true throwback may be that we could be at the beginning of Hamlin taking it back to 2010. He worked hard to get through the offseason, and now, six weeks into the season, he is in Victory Lane.
