What 3x Daytona 500 Denny Hamlin Is Looking Forward to in the Great American Race

Having started his season off the right foot by winning at the Clash, Denny Hamlin is now heading to the Daytona 500, a race which is more than just a race, one that he has won three times already. It goes without saying that Hamlin would be looking to capitalize on his momentum from LA in Daytona by making it four 500 wins. But there’s other things that the Joe Gibbs Racing driver is looking forward to as well.

During a recent conversation with Dale Earnhardt Jr., the #11 driver opened up on how this coming trip to Daytona is going to be different from those of the last few years. “We have a new Camry and that’s going to be one difference. There’s going to be a lot of anticipation from the Ford and the Toyota camp of, ‘What do we have?’ Because if you look at the qualifying results at superspeedways over the last 3 years, really since the Next Gen started, it’s pretty much in line with downforce and drag numbers,” he said.

“If there’s one manufacturer and it could be Chevrolet that is strong because if other manufacturers feel like they made a gain in downforce, more likely that came at the cost of drag, so now is the Chevrolets gonna take over the domination of qualifying on superspeedways? Or does the Ford and Toyota have an advantage on those tracks?”

Hamlin noted that this is what he’s looking forward to the most, to see where they all stack up, and how the bodies of Chevrolets, Toyotas, and Fords compare to each other.

Potential future superstar in NASCAR is studying Denny Hamlin

Shane Van Gisbergen took the NASCAR world by a storm when he won the inaugural street course race in Chicago last season in his very first outing in the sport. This year, SVG is looking for more experience of stock car racing, a big aspect of which is superspeedway racing.

And to prepare for that, Gisbergen is studying one of the sports’ finest on plate tracks, Denny Hamlin.

“Normally, (I’d) watch (superspeedway races) and it just looked like cars driving around flat-out, but nowadays, I’m trying to study it as much as I can. And you know, there was a Denny Hamlin onboard from last year’s Talladega race where he had to come back through the field,” he said as per NASCAR. “I’ve been studying that, just kind of seeing how it all works.” 

SVG added that watching a superspeedway race is like watching a “high-speed chess match” while also watching a lottery in some ways.