Denny Hamlin has his sights set on 60. Sixty NASCAR Cup Series wins, to be exact.
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During a segment on his new Dirty Mo Media podcast Actions Detrimental with Denny Hamlin, which is set to officially air on February 6, the longtime Joe Gibbs Racing driver and 23XI Racing co-owner dished on the motivation behind the self-set milestone that he'll likely be chasing over the next few years.
12 wins to go.
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"My crew chief (Chris Gabehart) asked me, he's like, '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 recalled. "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."
Right now, the three-time Daytona 500 winner has 48 Cup wins, making him tied with Herb Thomas for 16th on the all-time Cup wins list. If he were to ultimately get to 60, Hamlin would surpass Tony Stewart, Junior Johnson, Ned Jarrett, Lee Petty, and Rusty Wallace.
Provided that Kevin Harvick doesn't score any more wins during his final year in the Cup Series, Hamlin's 60 wins will tie him with the 2014 Cup champ for ninth on the list. Getting to that big number won't be easy, especially since Hamlin is 42 years old and realistically only has a couple years left as a full-time Cup driver. On top of that, it's harder to rack up wins in NASCAR nowadays than it was in previous eras (which Hamlin recognized) due to the debut of the Next Gen car and other NASCAR rule changes that have led to more competitive parity.
"Racing and winning, I believe, is tougher than ever, because everything is more similar," Hamlin continued.
When co-host Jared Allen asked him how many wins he needs to get this year to be on track with his goal, Denny felt like four was a doable number. Now, Hamlin, who has run 17 full seasons in the NASCAR Cup Series, has five seasons with four or more wins (2009, 2010, 2012, 2019, and 2020). As he already mentioned, seeing Victory Lane four times in 2023 isn't going to be as attainable as it would've been when Denny was in his prime. In 2021, Hamlin scored two wins, and repeated that stat in 2022. Will he be able to get his act together and string together a dominant streak this year? I guess we'll have to wait and see.
