Hamlin told Racing America on SI<\/a>. \u201cYou know, back to work. You\u2019ve got to just do the best you can to reset. I\u2019ll certainly need some time to do that. But generally speaking, this is the race hangover time. You\u2019ve got to just take a little break, get a reset, get recharged, it\u2019s just this year will probably take a little bit longer than years past.\u201d<\/p>\nHamlin spent weeks fine-tuning every detail before the NASCAR finale race in Phoenix, and after locking himself into the Championship 4 with a win at Las Vegas, he worked tirelessly on the simulator and even changed his driving style to gain an edge.<\/p>\n
He led 208 laps that afternoon, but then came the caution, where William Byron\u2019s cut tire brought the field back together, and what looked like a certain win quickly turned into heartbreak for Hamlin.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverything was right, but it didn\u2019t work out in the end,\u201d Hamlin admitted. \u201cIt\u2019s one of those things, sometimes you go into overtime but the score wasn\u2019t even. You were up 30 to nothing, and you lose. And so, it\u2019s just, I don\u2019t know. It took so much out of me, it drained so much out of me, time-wise.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hamlin Learning To Move On Again<\/p>\n
For most drivers, losing a title that close might have been the final straw, but Hamlin has been in NASCAR long enough to know how to keep going as he\u2019s won 60 races, built a legacy, and proved he can race with the best.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo borrow from Carl Edwards, I mean, with five laps to go, I knew what it was like to be a champion,\u201d Hamlin said. \u201cI did everything I was supposed to and, 40 seconds or 50 seconds at the end deciding whether I win that championship or not has no bearing on my ability or what I\u2019m capable of. I just don\u2019t have the trophy sitting at home but I know we were the best.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hamlin was reminded of Edwards, who famously walked away from NASCAR after his own heartbreaking title loss in 2016, and while Hamlin made it clear he\u2019s not retiring anytime soon, the talk helped him gain perspective.<\/p>\n
Off the track, Hamlin still found reasons to smile as at the NASCAR Awards Banquet, he received a $60,000 donation from Xfinity for the Denny Hamlin Foundation, which funds cystic fibrosis research and is a cause close to his heart, as one of his cousins has battled the disease since childhood.<\/p>\n
During this offseason, Hamlin plans to slow things down as he wants to spend more time at home, attend his daughters\u2019 events, and maybe take a much-needed vacation. \u201cI don\u2019t have any plans\u2026. But I\u2019m going to take some time and go on a vacation at some point. I certainly need it very, very badly. Other than that, just spending more time at home,\u201d he admitted.<\/p>\n
While the loss at Phoenix will stay with him for a while, Hamlin isn\u2019t giving up as he knows what it takes to get back to the top, and he\u2019s not ready to stop chasing that one goal yet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Denny Hamlin\u2019s offseason has started differently this time as the veteran driver is still trying to move on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":276338,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,634,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-276337","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nascar","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-nascar","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276337","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=276337"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276337\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/276338"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=276337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=276337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=276337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}