Denny Hamlin ‘never envisioned’ his career would go this direction as a driver-owner

Denny Hamlin never thought that he would be competing in NASCAR and owning a racing team at the time same. On his Actions Detrimental podcast, the 43-year-old talked about being a co-owner of 23XI Racing with NBA legend Michael Jordan.

“I never envisioned my life would have ended up this way,” Hamlin said. It’s just hard to put it into words, for sure.”

Hamlin did not win the Geico 500 at Talladega on Sunday as he was involved in an accident that ended his day early. But he still came out a winner because Tyler Reddick, a driver for 23XI Racing, earned the victory. Everyone from the team celebrated, including Jordan who was in attendance.

“He is not an absentee owner, for sure,” Hamlin said about Jordan. “He cares about this. He’s a race fan first. I’m very very grateful that we struck up the friendship that we did 14 years ago, and what it has grown into. It’s just been amazing. I find myself pinching myself at times that not only is things going well on the track for me in my career but to be also affiliated and have the partners that we have with Toyota and Michael Jordan and all the sponsors that on 23XI, it’s just surreal to me.”

23XI Racing features Reddick and Bubba Wallace as its two NASCAR Cup Series drivers. For Reddick, the win on Sunday is his first of the year and third with 23XI Racing.

Denny Hamlin dealt with a lot of emotions at Talladega

Hamlin also talked about the emotions he dealt with on Sunday because of him losing as a driver and winning as an owner. “I still find myself hard because I’m such a tough competitor, getting away from the emotion of, ‘Damn, my day just sucked.’ Oddly enough when my cars had won I had a pretty good day myself,” he said. “Usually, I’m in the top-5 or battling for the win as well, so it’s not a complete loss. But today was like, ‘Oh my god we finished like last.’ I left there with no points and then all of a sudden my brain has to shift to, ‘Oh I need to be excited now.’ And I was, but I really was once I got to Victory Lane, right?

“When you see how [excited] all the crew guys were, the team members were, Michael [Jordan] how excited he was. It’s a big deal, man. You can’t downplay it in kind of way I’m sure they got Michael highlights going all over the damn place on social media. Certainly, Jared, you got the photo op of us kind of embracing there in Victory Lane. It’s his first time that he got to experience that.”