Denny Hamlin is already a future NASCAR Hall of Famer by every scale there is. He collected his 52nd Cup Series win in Bristol on Sunday and locked his spot in the 2024 playoffs. With 31 races left in the season, he will be focused solely on accumulating as many wins as he can in them to heighten his legacy. But can he reach the coveted 60-win mark this year?
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Spire Motorsports driver Corey LaJoie doesn’t think he can. The #7 Chevy driver is all behind Hamlin to be the best driver on the grid but 8 more wins this season appear to be a daunting task to him. He said on his podcast, “Nobody’ seen double digits with the Next Gen car. If any team can do it, it’s him and that #11 team. They are so strong on pit road. They are so strong on the box. And obviously, Denny is locked in right now.”
Continuing, LaJoie noted that William Byron was able to garner 6 wins in 2023 and that Larson had managed to post double-digit wins in 2021, a year before the Next Gen was introduced. On Hamlin, he concluded that the Joe Gibbs Racing star could bring in 5 or 6 wins, at best.
Hamlin is actively on the hunt to reach 60 career wins in NASCAR
Reaching 60 wins is something that Hamlin considers to be a big milestone in his career. He said, as reported by Forbes, back in 2020 after his 43rd win, “I’m going to continue racking off wins. A career goal of mine is to get to 60 wins. That number shifted over the last few years. It was 40 and now, it’s 60. I think we can get that done. Hopefully, we can continue that success.”
The success has positively continued as age struggles to catch up with the three-time Daytona 500 champion. He is now the 13th most successful NASCAR driver in history and will only climb the ladder as he edges closer to the 60-win mark. On his immediate horizon are Lee Petty (54 wins), and Rusty Wallace (55 wins).
He clarified his goal further in an episode of Actions Detrimental last year. “My crew chief asked me, ‘You got goals? You got drive? You got all this s*** going on. You still got drive?’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, man, if I’m going to get 60 wins, I got to start going, like, quickly,” Hamlin said. “So, I just feel like, if you can get to 60, that is just a class that is just so rare of the drivers that are in it.”
The driver will get an opportunity to add to his tally in the Circuit of the Americas on Sunday. There’s no question that he will be hoping to prove the beliefs of several like LaJoie wrong, come November.
