{"id":287659,"date":"2025-11-16T23:06:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-16T23:06:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/287659\/"},"modified":"2025-11-16T23:06:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-16T23:06:08","slug":"denny-hamlin-reveals-carl-edwards-is-shooting-up-list-of-nascar-drivers-he-admires-respect-him-so-much","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/287659\/","title":{"rendered":"Denny Hamlin reveals Carl Edwards is shooting up list of NASCAR drivers he admires: ‘Respect him so much’"},"content":{"rendered":"

For a moment, it looked like Denny Hamlin was going to end his NASCAR <\/a>career much in the same way Carl Edwards ended his, abruptly. However, we know that he is racing again in 2026 and is likely going to finish out his contract through 2027 before hanging it up. <\/p>\n

Denny Hamlin and Carl Edwards used to be teammates. Still, the two drivers have never exactly been close with one another. <\/p>\n

This week on his Actions Detrimental <\/a>podcast, Hamlin addressed his relationship with Edwards. He also discussed his newfound respect for Edwards and his career in NASCAR.<\/p>\n

\u201cI certainly got more of a personal understanding and certainly admiration for Carl Edwards here lately,\u201d Denny Hamlin explained. \u201cJust over the last year, certainly when he went away from the sport, at that time, I didn\u2019t know, I was teammates with him, but I didn\u2019t know a whole lot about Carl. You know, we didn\u2019t have a ton of conversations. <\/p>\n

\u201cEven as professional teammates. I mean, when we had to come together on Mondays, that\u2019s what we did, but it was separate after that. \u2026 There\u2019s people, always ask me all the time now, \u2018Who do you admire or who do you look up to on and off the racetrack? Another driver.\u2019 And for the longest time, my answer was Jimmie Johnson, and it\u2019s still there. He\u2019s still the guy as far as my respect level for what he did on the racetrack and who he is off the racetrack. But like Carl Edwards is shooting up that list hard. <\/p>\n

\u201cJust simply because, as I\u2019ve gotten to know him through interviews that we\u2019ve had, we had one sit-down kind of at Pocono. We\u2019ve had production things where we\u2019ve had interactions, you know, post-race. I think it was a little bit misreported that like I called Carl after the race. That is not correct. I don\u2019t want Carl to think that I\u2019m some liar who is telling the media that for sympathy, that\u2019s not true. We exchanged messages, and we did talk, but I didn\u2019t specifically reach out to Carl. I think that was a little bit of a misrepresentation. But I had some good conversations with him.\u201d <\/p>\n

Denny Hamlin went through heartbreak. Carl Edwards did too. Both were victims and beneficiaries at times of the system that exists today in NASCAR. You think of Edwards and the \u201cwhat ifs?\u201d Like, what if he raced another 10 years? He\u2019s not much older than Hamlin, and he still looks like he\u2019s in great shape. <\/p>\n

In 2015 and 2016, Edwards won five races total. He was still in the prime of his racing career. Yet, he walked away from it all. Hamlin had that option. It was in front of him after Phoenix two weeks ago. Yet, he\u2019s staying. A lot could be learned from both of their stories and their NASCAR careers. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For a moment, it looked like Denny Hamlin was going to end his NASCAR career much in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":287660,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,634,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-287659","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\/287659","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=287659"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287659\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/287660"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=287659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=287659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=287659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}