Kevin Harvick's Happy Hour presented by NASCAR on FOX - Denny Hamlin Interview After Winning All-Star Race at Dover | VICTORY LAP

Episode Date: May 18, 2026

Denny Hamlin breaks down his massive NASCAR All-Star Race win at Dover, winning $1 million, the NASCAR All-Star format, and overall race strategy. On this episode of Kevin Harvick’s Happy Hour, Mamba Smith sits down with Denny Hamlin to discuss his All-Star race victory, what it took to win the race, his honest thoughts on the future of the NASCAR All-Star Race, and his opinion on what should change. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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free of charge. BetMGEMGEMP operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming, Ontario. Definitely new opportunities to win a million bucks heavily increased when they changed the schedule in that manner. He must have stayed up late. Welcome to Kevin Harvick's Happy Hour podcast, and it is the Victory Lab, your boy, Mama Smith, back in the hot seat. Now listen, folks, if it smells like money and looks like money, it must be Denny Hamlin, because my man got the bag this week. DH, congratulations on the million dollars, my friend.

Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate it. It's, you know, it was, I wasn't too excited about Dover being the all-store race, but I definitely knew my, my opportunities to win a million bucks heavily increased when they changed the schedule in that, in that manual. For sure. Let's talk about the beginning of the day because, you know, the way practice, the way qualifying was, right, you, you deal off pit road and then you spin out, were you just trying to get everyone, you know, give them a chance? Or was that part of the scheme? What was going on with that? It's just an old eye racing trick, you know, you just do the burnout, all the things. No, but I, so, you know, there's, there's this shine on new tires, right? And so you got to knock the shine off. And so I didn't spin the tires leaving, like when I made the turn there, I didn't spin them. So I still had the shine on the tires. And when I actually tried to, okay, let's test the apron because I saw so many guys having issues,

I saw the shine on it, spun it right out, and just lost control of the car. So, lesson learned there, definitely flat-spotted them. I was down a set of tires for the race because those were beaten up so bad. But still was good enough. You know, the team really, that's a qualifying, a large amount of that goes to the race team itself. And very surprising to get the pole. Honestly, this is not my forte is that type of format for qualifying. when you look at the format i heard you talk about um talk about it how you thought it was pretty

entertaining it was fun there's a lot of comers and goers throughout the race uh what was your what was your perspective of the format do you like it in in this in this manner well i thought it challenged you i mean it's certainly challenged you know if you go out and you win the first stage or you uh finishing the top five you're going to have to start 20th or worse and so now let's see how your car is in traffic and see how good you are in traffic and are you able to pass and so what I did like about it, and I understand there was some chaos with it, and I totally get that, and I could be the next guy in the next wreck. But it, you know, with every pass, usually when you go to the back, because you have an issue,

every pass becomes harder. Well, actually, in this scenario, the further you went up front, the weaker the car was, because they had finished the tail of the last segment. So it actually promoted lots of overtaking in that. second stage. Yeah, my home track, Thunder Road, we have the thing called the Milk Bowl, and it's a very similar format. It always brings high entertainment. When you look at Dover, Denny, what about this racetrack really suits your style? Why do you love it so much? You know, I didn't love it for a really, really long time. I actually had two former crew chiefs

text me after the race, says, man, we remember, we just, we showed up here and we go three laps down before they dropped the green. And I just, you know, I just never had a good feel about this place because it's so far from the roots of racing that I grew up doing, the local short tracks, right? The South Side Speedway, South Boston, this is just not, that's not Dover. And so I really struggled to find the feel I needed at this place. And then, you know, I think after watching Jimmy Win is about 10th race at this racetrack, I'm just like, I'm going to spend a day just studying what he's doing.

I'm just going to watch a race from his end car every lap. Like, it's my job. And so I just started studying it. And I said, all right, I'm going to the racetrack, going to approach it like I think he would. And from that point on, we've had success. Now, that's an interesting point. The work, the working in the lab, the putting the time in, that separates the good guys from the great guys. Have you been noticing more guys putting in that work, or is this separation still pretty big?

No, I mean, from the guys I work around, right? Listen, from Joe Gibbs' perspective, I mean, everyone's a little bit different there, 2311's perspective. I mean, I expect those guys to work very hard. And, you know, I'm one of those owners that will check up and see if you, you know, put the work in. And so that's, and I think that's a lot of reason they've taken some giant leaps forward is that, you know, they have the ability to have somebody that's on another team come into their meetings, hear them, maybe throw in a few other suggestions, and it's the team owner that gets to decide where they put the resources to make their cars go faster. So I think that that's why it's all coming together over there across the street. Yeah, you talk about, you know, what it's like.

in 2311. Well, you know, they've been getting the better of, of the field of everybody this year with Tyler Redick with all those wins. But you got the million bucks. What was the text like with MJ? I know there had to be something had to be there. Yeah. I mean, he just gives me a congrats partner usually when I win.

And unless he's there in person, then we chat it up. But, you know, I know he's on a far different time zone than what we are right now. So he must have stayed up late because that the text I got. I'm trying to do the math. I'm like, ooh, 4 a.m. That dude, he's staying up and watching his racing. There's no doubt about it. There's no doubt about it that Michael Jordan loves his NASCAR racing.

Danny, before I let you go, I want to pick your brain a little bit. The All-Star Race, where what we do with it? What do you think is next? Do you have any suggestions? Is anything you'd like to see with the next All-Star Race? Yeah, I mean, I talked about it on the podcast last night, but I feel like, you know, if I'm Steve, O'Donnell right now or Ben Kennedy.

I'm going to SMI and I'm saying, okay, we're going, we're going to find a way to go to Nashville Free Grounds next year on Saturday night. I think that gives a lot of the people what they want and I'm well aware that people change what they want by the day, especially NASCAR fans. But I just think that it needs, all-star races need to be at night.

You've got to have the open's got to come back. The format, I didn't have. a huge issue with the format. I knew there was some math involved. I think TV certainly could do a little better. Maybe you have where their finishing position was while they're live standings or where they're at to just kind of help you with the math. But I thought the invert was good. The race needs to be shorter. That race yesterday was entirely too long. So there's a few things on the list, but I definitely feel like bringing it to a shorter type of track. It doesn't have to be the shortest track, but a shorter type of racetrack, shorter distance at night,

Nashville. Now we're starting to put a lot of things together that are people would really be intrigued about. Those parties, Denny, you remember how the parties used to be in Charlotte when we had the, when we had the All-Star race here. Nashville, Nashville All-Star Party? That might be something I could sign up for. I can sign up for that. I get it. I get it. Uh, man, listen, before, I had one more question that I wanted to ask you. As you look for the rest of your season, you know, your burnouts. Brother, you've been doing some interesting things. I know you had a burnout down to the end of Pitt Road last year.

You kind of keep moving it up. What do we have to see for the rest of the year? I know you're going to get a couple more dubs here. Yeah, apologies to those watching. I know they were a little confused on what was going on. I was being told on my radio and I kept checking. So I did a burnout. They said, go do a burnout and turn one.

all right i did it i said i said now what they says go sit at the end of pit road until they call you they're setting up the stage so i just sat there and i kept checking in because they were coming to me saying go and i says i'm waiting on someone to tell me to go and and so they're checking in tv's waiting on me so i i don't know i'm probably a little shared responsibility on on that awkwardness but um i tried to give the people on the front stretch a little bit of a little bit of smoke on the way to the victory lane. But they switched to victory lane up. They wanted it closer to the fans, which I definitely appreciated.

Nah, that's cool. You did what you could in the situation. When you got to the front stretch, it looked good, man. Denny Hammond, walk-in, future Hall of Famer. Appreciate it. Congratulations on the win, big guy. Thanks. Appreciate it.

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