Poor Denny just can’t catch a break.
It’s been a brutal offseason for NASCAR in general, but especially for Cup Series driver Denny Hamlin.
Of course Denny suffered a heartbreaking loss in last year’s season finale, narrowly missing out on his first ever Cup Series championship thanks to a late race caution and pit strategy.
Then the offseason started with the high-profile trial in the antitrust lawsuit filed against NASCAR by 23XI Racing, the team owned by Hamlin and NBA legend Michael Jordan.
But all that pales in comparison to later that same month when Denny’s father, Dennis Hamlin, passed away from injuries suffered in a fire at his North Carolina home that also left his mother, Mary Lou, hospitalized from the blaze.
During NASCAR media day, Denny put to bed any speculation that he would be missing any racing, though he admitted to Fox Sports that he had “considered all options.” The veteran driver said that he had made a commitment to his Joe Gibbs Racing team and would indeed be in the car for the preseason Clash, though at the time he admitted that he wasn’t entirely in the right mindset to race just yet:
“I think once I get in the swing of it, it’ll actually be good to get back to it. I just haven’t locked in for the season, necessarily, quite yet.”
Well Denny got a few extra days to prepare, with the Clash at Bowman Gray Stadium being postponed from Sunday to today due to a snowstorm that hit North Carolina.
But ahead of the race today, Denny revealed yet another challenge that he’ll be facing in 2026: He’ll be forced to race the entire season with a torn shoulder after suffering an injury while going through his parents’ burned down house.
It’s an injury that Denny also faced a couple years ago, having surgery in the 2024 offseason after ending the season battling with the shoulder problems that left his range of motion limited and was clearly affecting his performance in the car. But Denny said rather than have surgery that would keep him out of the car for multiple months, he intends to battle through it:
“Got some unfortunate news that I re-tore my shoulder that I had from 2024. So I’m going to have to go the rest of the season the way I was before there. I don’t think that it ever healed properly. Just noticed some issues really kind of right after the season. It just was nagging me a little bit. Took a little fall at my mom’s house going through all the rubble and stuff and just didn’t feel right. Got it re-scanned and they said it was tore again.
The option was just do it now in this first three, four months or just tough it out and do it first day of the offseason. That’s what I’ll do.”
As far as how much it’s going to limit him this season, in what’s expected to be his next-to-last year in the Cup Series, Denny says he’s going to have to be careful outside the car not to make things worse:
“I would think as the year goes on, it just kind of depends on certainly making sure I’m doing the things out of the car and keeping the range good, keeping the strength good to kind of get to that November date where I can work on it and get it fixed again. Limiting, honestly, the things I love to do.
I’m going to have to just, you know, that’s not going to be a priority during the season, unfortunately. So I’m just going to miss out on a lot of the fun things, but I can’t do some of the things I like to do simply because that aggravates it and it certainly causes the tear to get worse, and it’s kind of hanging on. It’s torn, but it’s still got a little few parts and pieces hanging on that I need to keep intact for the full year.”
Man, you hate to hear that, especially with all he’s been through recently.
Honestly a couple years ago I would have considered myself a Denny hater, but these past few months have really made me cheer for the guy and want to see him go out and win a championship.
And if he can do it with a torn shoulder? Well that would just make his already-Hall of Fame worthy resumé all the more impressive.
