At 44-years-old, and fresh off back-to-back NASCAR Cup Series victories a still in his prime Denny Hamlin has multiple years left on his Joe Gibbs Racing contract and has no plans to retire.
The comments were made in an interview with Dale Earnhardt Jr. on his Dale Jr Download podcast.
“Not right now,” Hamlin said. “I mean, you always have to plan for it, and you want to give the team proper time to come up with their next plan as well.”
Hamlin also co-owns 23XI Racing with Michael Jordan and continues to say that he expects his career to end in some shape or fashion in one of his own cars.
“I think that running some at 23XI is something that I’d like to do,” Hamlin said. “You know, Joe Gibbs Racing’s been amazing to me over the 20 years that I’ve been with them. Just fantastic, couldn’t be any better. Joe and that whole group has just been amazing.
“But you know, there’s certain things that are different. I do have a race team. You know, I really would like – even if I phased out and ran some there, that would be a cool goal of mine. Just whatever it is. Five races, 25, whatever it might be. It’d be a cool way to phase out instead of just stopping. I think I’d have a tough time just stopping.
“But I want to be competitive when I do it. I don’t want to do it when I’m passed my prime of winning. However that timing works, that’s how I would like for it to work, but you don’t always get to decide.”
From that standpoint, having 23XI Racing a safety net for Hamlin if he still wants to race should the day come that Joe Gibbs decides that running the three-time Daytona 500 winner no longer is the most sensible thing for his business.
That has certainly happened to a degree at JGR recently with the likes of Erik Jones, Matt Kenseth and Kyle Busch.
“That’s the thing is sometimes, the people that employ you, they’ve got a business to run and sometimes it just doesn’t make sense for them anymore,” Hamlin said. “They bank on your decline, not necessarily what you’re doing. So, it, you know, we never know how this thing’s going to end up. Certainly, you always have to look towards the end and how you want it to go.”
