KANSAS CITY, Kan. – There was no talk of a championship when Denny Hamlin’s team met this past winter to discuss goals for the 2020 NASCAR Cup Series season, even though that is just about the only thing the 39-year-old driver has yet to win at stock car racing’s highest level.
In fact, team owner Joe Gibbs and crew chief Chris Gabehart didn’t even mention the season-ending race in November – which has moved this year from Florida’s Homestead-Miami Speedway to Phoenix Raceway – where the four remaining playoff drivers will battle for the title.
“His goal has been very simple,” Hamlin said of Gibbs, who has won five Cup Series championships as an owner and was inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame this year.
“He gave me a list of probably six guys in history that won X number of races. He said, ‘You want to be a legend? Get on that list. You win that number of races, you’ve done something special.'”
Hamlin won’t divulge that number, but it must be more than five. That’s the number of 2020 wins he hit Thursday night at Kansas Speedway, where he led four times for a race-high 57 laps. He took the lead for the last time on the 255th lap and held off the charging Brad Keselowski of Team Penske over the final 12 laps to make it back-to-back wins for the JGR No. 11 Toyota at the fast 1.5-mile track.