One of the most accomplished drivers in NASCAR, Denny Hamlin, only has a handful of milestones missing from his resume.

While one of them is certainly a championship, which he is still on the lookout for despite arriving in the victory lane 58 times, apart from that, though, a win at Indianapolis has been on Hamlin’s checklist for a long time. Despite coming painfully close several times, he has been unable to conquer Indy.

Considering his current form, the No. 11 driver was one of the favorites to win at the Brickyard 400. However, with his qualifying disaster, he himself gave up on almost all hopes of winning the contest. However, his third-place finish after starting 39th was nothing short of a remarkable feat.

After the race, when Hamlin dived deep into his Indy outing, he also opened up about a blunt reality check he had to face.

Denny Hamlin on the Chances of Winning the Brickyard 400 in His Career

Hamlin’s co-host Jared Allen began by recalling Bubba Wallace’s win at Sunday’s Brickyard 400. When Wallace finally won a race in 101 starts, he asked the co-owner of 23XI Racing to kiss the bricks at Indy with him.

Hamlin has been unable to kiss the bricks at Indy as a driver. However, with Wallace’s win, he did so, but as a team owner. He described it:

“I thanked him for that. I’m only going to have a couple more opportunities, and that’s what I was thinking.”

The Joe Gibbs Racing (JGR) driver then mentioned his car crash from the qualifying race. Right after Hamlin’s No. 11 Toyota crashed and he was still inside the car, he thought, “Well, I only got two more chances to win this thing.”

Hamlin further added that anytime he went to a track where he had not won in his career, his first thought usually was how many more chances he had at winning there. After announcing his contract extension with Joe Gibbs Racing, Hamlin believed he had two more chances at winning at Indy.

Following this, the No. 11 driver confessed that while he was happy with how things turned out in the end, he was also slightly disappointed in having blown his best chance of winning at Indianapolis.

However, Sunday’s race was far from his biggest Indy disappointment. He revealed that the 2020 Indy race, when he was leading and his tire failed him with six laps to go, was a far bigger heartbreaker than the recent contest.

He also added that his team, Joe Gibbs Racing, had given him one of the best cars year after year on his trips to Indy, and he wanted to do his part by arriving in victory lane once while he still had the chance.