When did Denny Hamlin become the villain? He doesn’t care. Bring it on, NASCAR
Move over Kyle Busch, NASCAR has a new villain and his name is Denny Hamlin. He curses, embraces chaos and does not give a damn whether you boo him.
He said so in part in a Twitter thread after last Sunday’s race at Martinsville, in which jeers rained down from the grandstands at his hometown track as he went nose-to-nose with Alex Bowman’s car after the checkered flag.
Hamlin doubled down on his comments Thursday during NASCAR’s Championship 4 Media Day, in which the three other title contenders answered questions as one would expect leading up to the season finale.
Martin Truex Jr.: “I feel really, really good.”
Kyle Larson: “I’m just really excited for the opportunity.”
Chase Elliott: “Hopefully we’re even more prepared now and we can go and do it again.”
Denny Hamlin: “I live in chaos. My life is chaos. I thrive under chaos.”
Hold up. What was that, Hamlin?
“Honestly, you can ask Kyle. The more s--- is stirred up around me, the more I come at it. I don’t mind things like that,” he said.
The three-time Daytona 500 winner is hungry for his first NASCAR Cup title, and he’s going scorched earth to get it. That might explain why he stunted Bowman’s burnout last weekend, then called his competitor a “hack” and “f---ing terrible” on live television. He later insulted Elliott’s fans, then posted the tweets explaining his passion.
“I don’t care what your opinions are. I don’t care what you think of me,” Hamlin’s thread read in part. “You don’t know me. Reverse the rolls with your favorite driver. Feel the same? There’s obviously a lack of respect out there that needs to be earned back. The easy way, or the hard way.”
Hamlin told reporters Thursday that he wanted to make a statement at Martinsville with a win for “the old foot on the throat” moment heading into this weekend. Bowman instead spun Hamlin from the lead and took the checkered flag. Now, Hamlin is generating his own momentum with his fifth chance for his first title.
This is playoff Hamlin 2021, which is very different from playoff Hamlin 2020, and an even further cry from the Hamlin in 2010 whose confidence was shot before the final race of the season.
“In 2010 I would have said, ‘Am I really good enough to do this?’ ” Hamlin said. “I mean, I had a ton of wins in 2010. I was battling Jimmie (Johnson), and honestly things out of my control took us from locking it up to losing it. I got in my own head, then I messed up. I just wasn’t as comfortable then as what I am now.”
A late pit stop at Phoenix that year shrunk Hamlin’s points lead over Johnson in the second-to-last race of the season. It’s a race that Jeff Burton remembers well since his team was on the same strategy. (“It didn’t work out for us either,” Burton said.) Burton pulled up on pit lane somewhere behind a defeated-looking Hamlin after the flag.
“He had this look like, ‘We just gave it up,’ ” Burton said.
An early spin by Hamlin at Homestead the following weekend ensured that Johnson would win his fifth consecutive title and Hamlin would fall short after eight wins that season. He’s had three more tries in NASCAR’s playoff era format for a championship and not yet been able to get it done. He enters this year’s title race seven wins behind Larson, but with unabashed confidence, more haters and something like a chip on his shoulder.
“I said it last week, I didn’t necessarily appreciate the way he handled himself post-race,” former driver and NBC race analyst Kyle Petty said. “But I could not deny that Denny Hamlin coming into Phoenix, if he carried that emotion for the next four or five days, was gonna be a dangerous man.”
The question left unanswered is whether Hamlin can harness the emotion inside the helmet and inside the car.
“And I think he can,” Petty said. “I think he’s primed and I think that gives him something that the other three don’t have. They’re not mad at anybody ... Denny’s gonna have to put in a race where he drives in anger to perfection.”
If he does that, more boos could follow, especially since he’s racing defending champion and fan-favorite Elliott for the trophy. Hamlin said that he noticed his own popularity take a hit after crashing Elliott in 2017, when the collision prevented both drivers from advancing to the Championship 4 that year.
“As soon as you do something negative towards someone who is very popular, you will forever have that kind of badge on your uniform,” Hamlin said.
He noted that he took responsibility for the incident and commented on a double standard among fans in which they’re willing to see past any mistake made by their favorite driver. That’s why he doesn’t care about popularity, he said.
“Because it doesn’t correlate to common sense,” he said. “Honestly, we were the guys that were crashed (at Martinsville). We were booed? I’m confused.”
But does that bother him? The boos and fan perception? It might have quieted a younger version of himself.
“You would rather be booed than ignored,” Hamlin said. “The moment you get ignored, it’s bad news. You’re on your way out.”
Now, he’s gunning for the last race to get the last laugh.
