Field Level Media - Professional sports content solutions | FLM

The NASCAR Cup Series hosts its annual Darlington Raceway Throwback Weekend in the Goodyear 400 this Sunday, but Denny Hamlin took the wayback machine out for a spin last week and zoomed back about 15 years.

After displaying some old-school dominance around tiny, tight Martinsville Speedway to win the Cook Out 400, the Joe Gibbs Racing driver could not help but be his outspoken, abrasive self on the frontstretch.

He climbed out of his No. 11 Toyota to cheers, shockingly, as fans likely realized he had won for the first time in a bit — a 31-race drought that went back 11 months to Dover, to be exact. Then he found a way to transform those cheers back to the customary boos.

Brandishing a giant Carolina Blue-colored flag that read “11 Against the World,” Hamlin was all fluttery after the win, inciting a few catcalls after the cheering.

That’s the Denny we know and either love or hate — there is little middle ground there — but flag-waving and trash-talking aside, his performance Sunday prompted a question:

Is the 44-year-old Hamlin back during the latter portion of a Hall of Fame career?

In 2024, he won three times in the first 12 races that ran through the end of April, but he was a non-factor the rest of the way and again failed to win his first Cup title.

He’s a threat to win this week’s Goodyear 400 at legendary Darlington, where Hamlin is known for finding a unique entry into Turn 1 and using it to his advantage. He owns four career wins at the “Too Tough to Tame” track, which has been Darlington’s reputation all the way back to its first race in 1950.

Starting with the number eight — Hamlin’s win total in 2010 during his best season — the Chesterfield, Va., native has 55 career wins. That’s his new career total after last week’s victory that was one of the most thorough wins in recent memory. He led 274 of the final 275 laps and won by a dominant 4.6 seconds at a place where he has a great reputation but spent a decade of dormancy.

Hamlin was a popular Martinsville pick, and somehow that just felt right. After all, it’s Hamlin on a short track in the Commonwealth, right?

However, part of the reality was that Hamlin had been good at the half-mile track — winning three straight in 2009 and 2010 — but also had not found the checkers there since late March 2015, a 19-race rudderless run around the flat track.

Commentator Kevin Harvick said he believes in Hamlin, who now works with crew chief Chris Gayle instead of Chris Gabehart.

“That’s old-school Denny Hamlin,” Harvick said on “Kevin Harvick’s Happy Hour” podcast. “For Denny, this is an important moment … Bringing Chris Gayle in, he knew this was going to be a disruption to the rest of his life. He put the time in to get through the offseason and here we are six weeks into the season and he’s in Victory Lane.

“That says a lot about who he is as a driver and a leader.”

At Darlington this weekend, Hamlin will race the red-themed Sport Clips paint scheme to honor recent NASCAR Hall of Fame inductee Carl Edwards. While the colors may take us to a different era, the real throwback might be that we could be at the start of Hamlin taking it back to 2010.

Taking it to the pole on Sunday will be Hendrick Motorsports driver William Byron, who had the fastest car in Saturday’s qualifying by touring the speedway in 28.774 seconds (170.904 mph). That time was good enough to hold off the No. 60 Ford of Ryan Preece.

Hamlin, Chase Briscoe and Bubba Wallace completed the top five qualifiers.

–Field Level Media