Denny Hamlin Hopes Jimmie Johnson Doesn’t Wreck At Talladega

It sounds crazy, so Denny Hamlin knows you might not believe him.

But if Hamlin had his way, Jimmie Johnson and Kevin Harvick would escape Talladega without a wreck - along with Hamlin, of course.

That seems like a strange thing for Hamlin to wish, considering he’s only six points behind Johnson with four races to go in the battle to win his first Cup championship. Wouldn’t he secretly hope some sort of misfortune befalls his competitors?

Not according to Hamlin.

“You almost don’t want anything to happen to anyone, because you want to beat them straight up - 10 weeks, no questions about it,” he said. “ For me, if we left Talladega and (the points battle) was just the way it is, I’d be perfectly fine with that.”

The roots of Hamlin’s desire to win the title on his own merits may lie in an experience he had during his Late Model days.

One year, Hamlin found himself in a tight points race but was running low on funding with only a couple races left in the season.

“I didn’t have the money to go to the following week, because we had just simply tapped out and put all the money on credit cards that we possibly could,” Hamlin said.

Hamlin then got an offer from an unlikely source: One of his competitors’ team owners approached Hamlin and proposed funding the team for the remainder of the season.

Why would someone do that?

“Because he felt like if he went out there and won the next two races in a row and won the championship, he wasn’t beating the best - because the best wasn’t out there because of circumstances,” Hamlin recalled.

Hamlin feels the same way about potential bad luck for Johnson or Harvick at Talladega - he hopes the wild-card nature of restrictor plate racing doesn’t have an impact on the championship. Then, “when we leave this weekend we can see these last three weeks who’s got the best stuff,” he said.

“This is the only true wild card track we have in the Chase, to where the driver really cannot control his own destiny,” he said. “In all the other ones, it’s the best cars and drivers of that particular weekend. This one, that’s not the case.

“I can honestly say I almost wish no bad luck on anyone.”

Hamlin was careful to emphasize that he’d still proudly hoist the Sprint Cup trophy no matter how he won it. And that’s probably smart.

After all, you know what they say: Be careful what you wish for.