Denny Hamlin crossed another mark with his 61st Cup Series win in the fifth race of the season at Las Vegas Motor Speedway last Sunday, moving past Kevin Harvick on the career wins list. As a result, he joined the likes of Richard Petty, Bobby Allison, Dale Earnhardt, and Jeff Gordon as drivers who have found victory lane continuously across 20 seasons.
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In NASCAR, where many hang up their helmets around 45, give or take a year, Hamlin is still keeping the wheels turning. While Hamlin has played down his talent in the past, saying he is just lucky to be on that list and that he places others on a higher rung, the numbers reveal a more explicit picture.
He stands among the few, alongside Jeff Gordon, Kevin Harvick, Richard Petty, and Mark Martin, to win at least five races after making 700 Cup starts. More than that, Hamlin holds the best win rate beyond that mark, taking the checkered flag first in roughly one out of every five races, a return that puts him in rare air.
After the win, Hamlin’s radio crackled, “Old dog can still hunt.” When pressed, he said the result meant more at this stage (when he is 45), having seen how the story often plays out for those he idolizes. “I saw at the end of their career, when they got my age, that the performance changed, for whatever reason.”
“I think Kevin Harvick is kind of the one that sticks out, that he was still doing it at this level at this age. I don’t know when he stopped winning. Maybe 46-ish, 47-ish. I’m not really sure. That was, like, motivation to me that, Okay, it’s possible. Not everyone ages the same. Eyesight is the same, reaction is the same at the same age. But that gave me hope that, like, I think that I can still do.”
For Hamlin, the fight is not just against the field but against the clock, and he knows it pretty well. That’s why, he said, “Do I really want to do this again? So days like today… Last night I was grinding still. I was working hours and hours and hours after this practice was over to try to figure out how we could make our car better, communicating with the team on that. So, it feels good when you get the cookie at the end.”
The JGR ace admitted the road is not always smooth. There are days early in the week when the exertion wears thin, when the question creeps in about how long to keep going. Moments like the NASCAR Cup Series Championship Race at Phoenix last year, where the effort did not match the result, can take the wind out of the sails.
Still, wins like Las Vegas put wind back in them. As long as the results keep coming, Hamlin is not ready to park it, choosing instead to keep his foot in it and chase the next checkered flag.
