“I was kind of on the Denny Hamlin plan but they’ve just fallen apart…a bunch.” (at 6:34)
“I was on team Denny for a while. I thought this is the guy that’s won all these races, this is finally the year. The last seven races he has averaged a 23rd-place finish,” Rice added.
Joe Gibbs Racing driver Hamlin has 54 Cup Series wins in a career spanning over two decades, including three Daytona 500 wins. However, he has yet to claim a Cup Series championship title.
PRN’s other co-host, Alan Cavanna, believed things “will be fine” once the drivers and teams enter the 2024 playoff rounds. Rice then stated:
“I mean, I could sell my team Denny Jersey here pretty soon. Let me see what he does now, he may come out and blow the field away at Richmond. He’s really good at the short tracks.” (at 7:3)
NASCAR returns to Richmond Raceway after a two-week hiatus for the 2024 Paris Olympics for the Cook Out 400 on August 11.
With only four races left before the first round of playoffs, Rice believes that #11 Hamlin would have a great run at Richmond. The show hosts also claimed that the performance in the remaining four regular races would impact the rest of the season for the Cup drivers.
“I need to capitalize now” – Denny Hamlin on an urgency to win the Championship title.
NASCAR veteran Denny Hamlin is one of the most successful drivers in the modern era of NASCAR. The 43-year-old JGR driver and co-owner of 23XI Racing recently talked about how his mindset changed in the last couple of years as he believes the “sunset clock is ticking”.
In an episode of Actions Detrimental, Hamlin opened up about his mindset and the limited opportunities he has to win the Cup Series championship. He said:
“In the last couple of years, I’ve definitely been more selfish on the race track than I was early on simply because I know I’ve now set a goal for myself right and I know that the sunset clock is ticking right. So there’s that urgency.” (at 48:16)
“I think that clock is going off a little bit and so it’s making me say, ‘Okay, well how many more shots am I going to have at this?’. So I need to capitalize now so I think that kind of what shifted my mindset on how I race over the last few years,” Hamlin added.
Hamlin currently stands in P4 in the overall Cup Series standings. He is 43 points behind the table leader and rival Kyle Larson. After 22 starts, the #11 Toyota driver has accumulated three wins, eight top-5s, and nine top-10 finishes.
