Toyota Racing – Denny Hamlin
NASCAR Cup Series Quotes
DARLINGTON, S.C. (May 7, 2021) – Joe Gibbs Racing driver Denny Hamlin was made available to media via videoconference prior to the Darlington race earlier today:
DENNY HAMLIN, No. 11 Sport Clips Toyota Camry, Joe Gibbs Racing
MARY LOU HAMLIN, mother, Denny Hamlin
How special is for you to be joined by your mom and have her support over all of these years?
DENNY HAMLIN: “It’s awesome. You definitely have to make sure you don’t take it for granted because a lot of parents don’t get to see their kids grow up and do what they always wanted to do. She’s been a supporter of mine since back in the go-kart days, chasing me across the country, running national events. She’s been on the grind with me the last 30 years or so.”
How proud are you of your son?
MARY LOU HAMLIN: “I’m so proud of him. Never did I think that he would actually get to the point to where he is now – even being a team owner. It amazes me how far he has gotten. I knew that he had the talent and all that his dad and I had wished for was that he would get to at least get to the point where he could compete with the best of the best, but for him to be one of the best of the best is very rewarding.”
DENNY HAMLIN: “I think all they ever wished for was somebody else to pay for it.”
MARY LOU HAMLIN: “That’s true.”
What’s your favorite memory you’ve shared with your mom at the track and vice versa?
DENNY HAMLIN: “For me, it probably was the Shootout win in ’06. I was in the race car, but I know at the time TV went to them and it was my mom and my dad – they were just going crazy. My dad was saying, ‘I knew it, I knew it.’ He still had doubts whether I was going to make it or not. Just then and how excited they were. Another one for me was probably Richmond, when I think I got the pole in one of my very first Richmond races and they were out on pit road with me as I was kind of waiting to see if I was going to get the pole. It was single car qualifying, so it took a while. They were right on the other side of the pit wall. I get out of the car and I’m just like, don’t jinx it , don’t jinx it, don’t talk about it, let’s just see how it goes. That’s one of my favorite memories.”
MARY LOU HAMLIN: “The Shootout for sure. I believe that his dad said that if he knew it was going to be that easy for him to do that, then he would have had more kids, more Denny Hamlins. It was very exciting. To win the first race out in the Cup car was just so exciting. I think one other memory I have was the first time he was ever on Talladega and he was practicing, and I was listening on the radio. He came on the radio and said, ‘I bet my mom is having a fit right now.’ As fast as they were going and as close as they were to one another, it was very nerve-wracking but that’s one of my memories.”
What are you driving these days?
MARY LOU HAMLIN: “I actually have a Toyota Highlander.”
DENNY HAMLIN: “You’re welcome.”
MARY LOU HAMLIN: “Which I love.”
What are your thoughts on the potential Talladega changes?
DENNY HAMLIN: “We had a meeting of sorts this week, but I think we are going to get back together in the next 7-10 days and kind of follow-up on that meeting. I think that Talladega is just not about speed. It’s the aerodynamic package as well. When we the nine-inch spoiler on the car, it made us run into each other. The faster way to go was to literally run into the person as hard as you could in front of you. Well, back in the old days of the bubble when you would get close to someone it would push them away, fans hated that, so they put a big spoiler on this thing to get us to run closer to each other, so it’s a balance. It’s not just about slowing the speed down; it’s got to do with the package as well. The package that is the safest is probably not the most exciting and vice versa, so we just have to figure out the balance of speed and danger and figure out how much we are willing to take.”
Do you think you will be able to bump draft in the Next Gen cars with the foam in the front and rear bumpers?
DENNY HAMLIN: “I’m not sure. I’m not sure how much extensive testing has been done on running those Next Gen cars together at the racetrack. I know that we hope it’s going to race better, and hope is a big word, and it is a strategy, but ultimately it comes with on-track testing and I think that will happen later this year, but we will know a little bit more at that point. I’m not really sure how those cars are going to react. The rear bumpers are a lot more rounded, so pushing someone off of center is going to be a lot different. You have to be aware of that. There’s just a lot of different elements that we don’t know about right now.”
Knowing the financial struggles your family went through supporting Denny, what was your reaction to him being a team owner?
MARY LOU HAMLIN: “I don’t think I had to give him any advice. I was saying earlier today when he was going to school, he wasn’t the best studier. He didn’t study, he didn’t like to study, he didn’t like to do his homework. But to see him now, he does his homework on everything. He makes good decisions. He studies things. It just amazes me that he has got this far. I’m so proud of him.”
What was it like telling your parents about the team ownership decision?
DENNY HAMLIN: “I’m not really sure how that first conversation went. I think she probably felt a lot better that I was teaming up with Michael (Jordan) versus trying to do this thing on my own. That was a big part of it. Probably the most pushback came from my dad because he probably wrote most of those checks back in the day. He’s like ‘Are you sure you can do this?’ I’m still not sure, but I’m going for it.”
What kind of spectator are you now?
MARY LOU HAMLIN: “I think I’m calmer other than Daytona and Talladega. Those make me pretty nervous. Even when he was in go-karts, I used to tape every one of his races so that he could go back after the race and watch it and learn from it, and I think that took a lot of the nervousness away at that time from when he was younger because I taped every single race of his in go-karts and local stock car races. I’ve gotten used to it.”
Do you ever think about how he started to where he is now?
MARY LOU HAMLIN: “It just amazes me. When I hear him talk to other business owners, it just amazes me the man that he has become. I’m just so proud of him.”
Is this a time for you to reflect with this race being a throwback weekend and Mother’s Day?
DENNY HAMLIN: “I think about it all of the time. It’s not just this weekend but I think about it all the time. When I think about the process of which it took to get to here, if one domino doesn’t fall in the exact order that it did – we don’t make it and I’m right now working at Chesterfield Trailer & Hitch, which is okay. I like that business. It was fun in Virginia. I think about that in the sense of who else is in that situation out there that maybe I can give an opportunity to one day. How can I find that next talent that’s not in the place where everybody sees them? I just think that I was very, very blessed to be in the situation that I was in. I had instrumental people throughout my childhood that believed in me and gave me an opportunity and kept me racing even beyond my family. My mom worked at AAA; my dad worked at Great Dane Tractor Trailers. He was a service manager there. We were just a very middle-class family, but we had small business owners that thought a lot of me and when I blew my engine or wrecked my car, they helped put it back together. That was the key. I always think about that when people ask me to help them all the time. I feel like maybe this is an opportunity to give back to them. Starting a race team, it’s an opportunity for me to give back to the community has done so well for me over my 16-year career. I don’t see the tunnel of driving ending anytime soon, but this is my runway to continue to give back to this sport well beyond my driving days. Hopefully, one day I can give that kid that came up just like me that same opportunity.”
What are the sensations you feel in a lap at Dover?
DENNY HAMLIN: “It’s the most physically demanding track for sure – simply because of the speed in the banking, the load that your body takes in the middle of corner. It’s a very, very tough track. It’s very rough. A lot of elevation changes from corner entry to the middle of the corner. It takes its toll on you. It hasn’t always been my favorite or best track during the course of my career, but honestly since being with Chris (Gabehart, crew chief) over these last few years, we’ve had some really good results there. I’m excited about it. I think we won there last year (Hamlin won the first race of the Dover doubleheader on August 22). Just winning at a track that I was struggling to run in the top-10 most of my career at always makes you enjoy it a little bit more. It is intimidating track. I would say that it is by far the most intimidating track that we go to.”
Being devout Catholic, how do you support Denny when he goes through struggles?
MARY LOU HAMLIN: “I pray a lot. My mother really believed in St. Jude, who was the saint of the impossible. I just pull out that St. Jude prayer card and I pull out her St. Jude key chain that she would carry with her all of the time. She always would say a prayer to St. Jude before Denny would race, so that sticks with me and that gets me through.”
How did you end up hanging with some of the New York Giants players?
DENNY HAMLIN: “I didn’t know anyone personally from that group. We had a couple mutual friends. Daniel Jones and a couple of those guys were in Charlotte working out for the last few months. One of my mutual friends asked, ‘Hey, they would like to play basketball, do you mind if they play at your place?’ I didn’t mind, of course, but unfortunately, they were short bodies, so I had to lace them up. I really didn’t want too, to be honest with you. That’s how I met them. Fun guys. I was downstairs. They had come in, and my friend was giving them a tour of the house. I was wondering where they were at and my buddies said that they couldn’t get them off of the racing simulator. One of them was where could they get a ride-along. They want to go race a car now, and where can they get a simulator. That was the biggest issue we had – was getting those guys off of my racing simulator.”
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