Denny Hamlin trying to maintain positive attitude despite tumultuous, tragic offseason

Like his NASCAR Cup Series peers, Wednesday is the "first day of school" for Denny Hamlin ahead of the exhibition Cook Out Clash that will unofficially kick off the 2026 season. 

But Hamlin's offseason looked quite a bit different than that of his competitors. He lost the 2025 championship in gut-wrenching fashion. He then turned his full attention toward the lawsuit being waged against NASCAR by Front Row Motorsports and 23XI Racing, the organization Hamlin co-owns. 

The lawsuit was finally settled in early December. But at the end of the month, tragedy struck Hamlin when a fire consumed his parents' house and resulted in the tragic loss of his father, Dennis, and the hospitalization of his mother, Mary Lou. 

Hamlin also revealed to the media on Wednesday that he re-tore his right shoulder, which he had surgery on ahead of the 2023 season, while he was going through the rubble at his parents' home. Rather than have another surgery and miss a significant portion of the season, Hamlin will tough out the injury during the 38-week, nine-month 2026 Cup Series campaign. 

Those aforementioned events would be enough to knock any athlete, and any other human, for that matter, off kilter. But Hamlin's attitude going into the 2026 season is a relatively positive one. 

Denny Hamlin's outlook heading into 2026 season

"The easy thing to say is, 'Poor me,'" Hamlin said on Wednesday, per Jordan Bianchi of The Athletic. "But I still have a fantastic life, a great family. A lot of people go through tragic tragedies.

"Everyone kind of has their times where they have to go through tough moments. And I think that those are really kind of building moments of your character. It's how you respond to it. I think that this season for me could certainly go one of two ways. There's not much of a middle road there; it's going to go really one way or really the other way. And it's up to me which way I decide to turn."