MARTINSVILLE, Va. — “It felt,” Denny Hamlin was saying about an hour after his light blue-and-white Toyota took the checkered flag at Martinsville Speedway, “like the old, old days.”
Old can mean so much around Hamlin, who at age 44 was the oldest winner at NASCAR’s oldest track since a 47-year-old Rusty Wallace won for the final time in his Cup career in 2004. In this case, old was a good thing. It was a return to winning.
Joe Gibbs Racing driver holds off teammate Christopher Bell for his series-leading sixth victory at track.
While Sunday marked Hamlin’s sixth Cup victory at this historic half-mile track, it was his first here since March 2015 — a span of 3,654 days.
“Ten years ago today, I had never made a NASCAR start in my life,’’ said 30-year-old Christopher Bell, who finished second to Hamlin, his Joe Gibbs Racing teammate.
Ten years ago, Chase Elliott was making his Cup debut in that race Hamlin won. He finished fourth Sunday.
Hamlin returned Sunday to the driver who challenged — and sometimes beat — Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson at this track when they were the dominant drivers.
It was an emotional win for Denny Hamlin, who ended a 10-year winless drought at his home-state track.
Hamlin led 274 of the 400 laps Sunday. Only two other times had he led more laps at Martinsville.
Hamlin had been good at this track in recent years — he had eight top-five finishes here since 2019 — but he wasn’t the best.
“It just was aggravating to be the next best at this track for the last five years, never having ‘it,’” Hamlin said after his 55th career Cup victory, which tied Wallace for 11th on the all-time list.
“The ‘it” is like the ability to control a race, run as fast as you need to to lead the race and pull away when you want. Today we had ‘it.’”
Just as forecasted by Chris Gabehart, who had been Hamlin’s crew chief until becoming the competition director at Joe Gibbs Racing after last season.
Gabehart leaned into he window of Hamlin’s car and told the driver just moments before the cars pulled on to the track Sunday that he would win today.
“I got it today,” Gabehart said of this particular feeling. “It’s you.”
The Joe Gibbs Racing star is tied with Rusty Wallace with 55 career victories in Cup.
Hamlin said that when Gabehart would say that in the 2019-20 seasons that “I pretty much knew that he had a bullet of a race car that he built and we were probably going to win that race.”
But Hamlin had been wary of Gabehart’s feelings in recent years because they hadn’t always led to wins. While Hamlin felt good about his car after Saturday’s practice, he knew there was more work needed.
“We did not have the best car,” Hamlin said. “We just didn’t. But I just had some sort of feeling that the direction we were going is the right way.”
It led him back to Victory Lane, a place he had not been to since April 2024 at Dover. He had gone 31 races without a win before Sunday.
Hamlin is getting to an age when drivers stop winning. Martin Truex Jr., who stopped competing in Cup full-time after last season, last won in 2023 at age 43. Johnson, a seven-time champion, last won a Cup race in 2017 at age 41. Gordon, a four-time champion scored his final Cup victory — which came at Martinsville in November 2015 — when he was 43 years old.
Did Hamlin ever worry his winning days were over?
“I probably am the king of irrational confidence,” he said. “I mean, generally speaking, I know that when I got the car to do it, I can be the best, so I haven’t felt like I’ve held back the car at any point. Certainly I’m not immune to understanding that Father Time is undefeated.
“Everything that I need to be good to be a race car driver is still really sharp. I feel like it hasn’t happened yet. It will, but not yet.”
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