Kevin Harvick's Happy Hour presented by NASCAR on FOX - Denny Hamlin Interview after his win at Darlington | VICTORY LAP

Episode Date: April 7, 2025

Fresh off his second straight win, Denny Hamlin joins Kevin Harvick for this week’s Victory Lap interview to break down his impressive performance at Darlington. The two veterans dive into what’s clicking for the No. 11 team, how Hamlin is staying locked in during a hot stretch, and what this win means as momentum builds deep into the season. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You're just going to find that 30% of your competition will take themselves out, generally speaking, week in and week out anyway. If you had to say theoretically a 15th place car, if you don't make a mistake, you should be able to finish eighth or so. That's just the numbers of it. Well, Denny, here we are two weeks in a row. Hopefully, we'll just keep the trend going as you keep this streak rolling. Tell me about your weekend. Two straight wins. You go from Martinsville to Darlington, two of your best tracks, headed to Bristol.

now, you know, possibly looking for three wins and row. Just talk me through your weekend at Darlington. We know you dominated at Martinsville and now you go to Darlington, you know, lead just a few laps and wind up in victory lane again. Yeah, it just kept ourselves in the game. I mean, this was kind of the epitome of, you know, don't make a mistake. Keep yourself part of the equation and maybe something good will fall in your hands at the end. And that certainly was the case this weekend. And it was great, you know, that, you know, last week that the pick crew, you know, got a lot of attention on kind of different things that they were doing. And then for them to get to showcase it essentially at the end of this race in a green, white, checkered situation where

they know that really, if they get you out with the lead, your chances of winning are pretty high. You know, they were salivating at that opportunity and they took advantage of it. Talk. We heard, we interviewed Michael Jordan, before the race. race, and he touched on just the effort and how good the pit crews were at 2311. As you look at the pit crew process and everything that has evolved with the next-gen car, and here we are, now you see it from the ownership side. You benefit from it from the driver's side. Talk me through that evolution of next-gen pit stops and how this process has changed.

Yeah, I mean, things have just gotten closer and closer. You know, the cars, as we go to these racetracks, this is, you know, like probably the eighth or ninth time that we've been at a next-gen car at Darlington. The field continues to get tighter and tighter. The drivers morph their styles closer and closer together, which is why you see the lap time so close between, like, first and 20th. And so it's the margins in which you got to make up the difference. And that's, do you execute? Do you have a clean green race where you don't make a mistake as a. driver. Do you execute on pit road when you have to and that money stop? You know, if you're on

pit road for a total of 40 seconds, the pit crew is responsible for about nine of it. And you're responsible for the other part. It's making sure you're doing a great job parking in your pit stall, making sure you're doing a good job leaving your pit stall. So all those things are a factor. And we're all just fighting over those tenths of a second here and there nowadays. And so the pit crew is just an integral part of it. And it's great to see them get kind of their moment to shine, right? Because us drivers, it's going to go in our stat column. It's going to be, you know, we're going to get the notoriety for it.

But ultimately, you know, the pit crew, this was, this is their Super Bowls to have an opportunity and a green white checker to take from third to first. From a driver's standpoint, when you look through the, through the weekend, I talked and just my experience with this car in just how frustrating it is to race at Darlington because it's narrow, the rubber gets built up, the line navigates to a very specific spot on the racetrack. Talk me through the frustration as a driver because it's a constant battle every lap not to wreck at Darlington, not to hit the wall, gain as much speed. The cars are affected so much by traffic. And like you say, that lap time has kind of morphed closer and closer together.

how do you stay mentally in the game? And I think this is where your experience and being 44 years old, 56 wins, winning for the old guys again. Obviously, that experience paid off in this situation this weekend because this can be the most frustrating racetrack in this car. Yeah, certainly can. And, you know, as a driver, I have to just realize the situation, right? And I talked about it in the media center afterwards that I moved. the goalpost of my goals for the race throughout the race. So when I start the race, I typically am thinking, okay, I'm going to win, I'm going to go out there. My anticipation is to win this race. And I'll know 50 laps in. Do I have a race winning car or not?

Where is my track position at that time? Am I struggling to make it into the top 15? If so, I will say in my mind, do what you have to do to finish 10th today. Get the most out of your car. We're not trying to win the race. I'm not going to go from 15th to 6 on this one run. So do what I can to get a couple spots on this run. Do what I need to do on pit road.

The pit crew do their jobs. And you're just going to find that 30% of your competition will take themselves out, generally speaking, week in, week out anyway. So if you had just say theoretically a 15th place car, if you don't make a mistake, you should be able to finish eighth or so. I mean, that's just the numbers of it. And so I just feel like I do a decent job of managing each run and what I'm trying to accomplish during that run. Maybe it's my crew chief leaving me out there long during a green flag cycle.

And at that point, I'm knowing, okay, I know what he wants me to do. He doesn't need to tell me. I need to optimize lifetime here. I don't need to, you know, I just need to run my line, whatever I have to do to make this strategy work out. And so just constantly understanding that is kind of the only advantage. like an old guy like myself would have. I love those advantages, and I love, I love the fact that old guys,

old guys still win. We don't have to get out of any of those, those young stats. Into the race, we saw that, that same style of burnout after the race. And tell me, tell me, did we run out a tire? Did we run out a distance? Were we just trying to go down the main front straightaway? What happened?

Why didn't, were we just not trying to go around the whole track? Or where are we at on that? I didn't want to get bottomed out on the bump stops back there. So you know when you blow a tire in these next-chain cars, you can't get it, you can't move anymore. So I didn't want to blow the tires out. First of all, I didn't want to damage the car. But beyond that, I just, I wanted to give very similar to Martinsville. So Martin'sville, I tried to do a full lap, but I kind of just, I noticed I was starting to run out of tire, so I stopped.

But I tried to go from end to end on the fan. So I tried to give everyone from turn four to turn one a smoke show, a good camera opportunity. And so once I get past there, there's no reason to do anything more. Just bring it back to the start, finish line, get your interview, and head to Victory Lane. I was betting against you. I was like, there's no way that this is going to last very long. I thought for sure that the tires will blow out. And so two other things.

So no flag this week. Where'd the flag go? Was that just a one-time deal? Yeah. I mean, that was something I got from a. fan right before the race at Martinsville. But I have it here at home, but it's not like it's traveling the road with us. Oh, okay.

Well, I think the only other thing I was disappointed in was no backflip. You have a Carl Edwards paint scheme. I mean, not even a chance. You pretty much squashed that right afterwards. So that would have been fun if Carl would have stuck around and done the backflip off the roof. I think he should have because me attempting a backflip. backflip would end my career immediately. Well, congratulations, and I'm glad you didn't do a backflip because you got a lot of race

wins left in you. You guys are on a roll right now. You're headed to Bristol. You think you've never done three in a row. What are the odds this week? Yeah, I mean, I feel like we're going to have a great opportunity. You know, what I like about it is that, you know, we obviously we won this weekend. We didn't have the best car.

I think our short track package is better than what our intermediate has been. so far this year. So I'm looking at, you know, the air dynamics of that, the tires is Bristol itself. You've got to be good on the top and the bottom. That's the key to that racetrack is running the same lifetime on both lines. I like our chances and certainly we're going to put in the work this week to make sure we get it done. Well, we know you're going to put in the work and that's the part that people don't realize. You work as much as anybody on the circuit. Love your approach to everything. Congratulations on two great weeks. I hope you're back. here talking again after after three weeks so go get them man i appreciate you guys thanks dany

thank you thank you