Denny Hamlin is 80 points out of the lead in the Chase with two races to go. Credit: Autostock

Family, friends knew Hamlin would be a star

Family put future in peril because they knew their son would make it

Dear Mr. Gordon,

I am an 80-year-old grandmother who has a 16-year-old grandson hopefully following in your racing skills. He has been go-kart racing since he was seven years old (like you), and at the last count he had 130 trophies. He lives in Richmond, Va., and according to sports people there he is making a name for himself.

Maybe some day you too will race together. Remember the name Denny Hamlin.

Thelma Clark

Hamlin won two points-paying races this season -- both at Pocono. Credit: Autostock

Inside the Numbers Hamlin's 2006 stats Track Start Finish Laps Status Daytona 17 30 203 running Fontana 5 12 251 running Las Vegas 16 10 270 running Atlanta 7 31 323 running Bristol 33 14 500 running Martinsville 41 37 307 crash Texas 8 8 334 running Phoenix 6 34 289 running Talladega 30 22 187 running Richmond 7 2 400 running Darlington 5 10 367 running Lowe's 8 9 400 running Dover 7 11 400 running Pocono 1 1 200 running Michigan 21 12 129 running Infineon 40 12 110 running Daytona 6 17 160 running Chicago 7 14 270 running Loudon 12 6 308 running Pocono 1 1 200 running Indy 14 10 160 running The Glen 10 10 90 running Michigan 9 9 200 running Bristol 6 6 500 running Fontana 8 6 250 running Richmond 1 15 399 running Loudon 5 4 300 running Dover 23 9 400 running Kansas 25 18 266 running 'Dega 12 21 188 running Lowe's 22 28 265 running Martinsville 3 2 500 running Atlanta 4 8 325 running Texas 6 10 339 running

Thelma Clark wrote this letter to four-time Cup champion Jeff Gordon nine years ago, long before Dennis and Mary Lou Hamlin hocked everything they owned to keep their son in racing, long before anybody outside of the state of Virginia knew Denny Hamlin existed.

She underlined her grandson's name just to make sure Gordon didn't miss it.

A rough draft of the letter always stays in her purse just in case she meets Gordon to tell him "I told you so.''

It also reminds Clark that while the rest of the NASCAR world is surprised the 25-year-old rookie is fourth in points with two races left in the Chase for the Nextel Cup, she isn't.

She knew way back when he was something special.

"Oh, golly yes,'' said Clark, who turned 89 last week. "I've been following him since he was a little kid. Ever since they built these little cars [go-karts] for him to race around in, he's been winning races.''

Hamlin had almost forgotten about the letter until reminded of it.

"She's an old lady who says what she thinks,'' Hamlin, a Chesapeake, Va., native said with a laugh. "She has a lot of faith in me, that's for sure.''

A lot of people do. The Hamlins took out a second mortgage on their home twice, emptied their 401k retirement fund and sold a handful of collector cars -- including a red 1967 Rally Sport convertible Corvette that belonged to Mary Lou -- to sustain their son's career.

They put their entire financial future at risk hoping Hamlin would be the one to beat the odds.

"So, as his dad says, to be able to sit in our rocking chairs one day and say we did everything we could,'' Mary Lou said. "We knew we were taking a chance. The way that we looked at it, the only ones who would have to suffer the consequences was his dad and I.''

The risk paid off late last year when Hamlin replaced Jason Leffler as the driver of the No. 11 FedEx Chevrolet at Joe Gibbs Racing for the final seven races.

The rest, as they say, is history. Hamlin won a pole in his sixth race and opened this season with a victory in the Budweiser Shootout for last year's pole winners.

He won his first race at Pocono in June and returned for a sweep in July, leaving him one victory shy of teammate Tony Stewart's record for most rookie wins.

He then became the first rookie to make the Chase and is only 80 points behind leader Jimmie Johnson heading into Sunday's race at Phoenix International Raceway.

Solid finishes at Phoenix and Homestead-Miami would give him a chance to top Stewart's fourth-place finish in 1999, the best for a rookie in the past 20 years. He's within striking distance of James Hylton's rookie record second-place finish in 1966, not to mention the championship.

Life off the track is looking up, too. Hamlin is renovating a lakefront home outside of Charlotte, N.C., next to team owner Joe Gibbs. He plans to move his parents from his childhood home in Richmond, Va., to the home he's been living in next to J.D. Gibbs, the president of JGR.

He also owns a plane.

But those who know Hamlin say there never was a risk.

"The thing is, you haven't seen Denny at his best yet,'' said Jim Dean, who may have saved Hamlin's career when he offered financial support four years ago. "Wait until he gets a couple of years under his belt. He'll make the Chase standing on his head.

"If he doesn't win it this year, he's going to win it. He's that good.''

Clark doesn't have to be told that. She saw her grandson's powerful desire to win 20 years ago when she beat him in putt-putt on the final hole.

"I used to go see him in the Late Model cars,'' she said. "He would start out on the pole position and lead all the way around. I started feeling sorry for the other people who watch these races because he made them boring.

"One day, it's going to be like that where he is now.''

Natural talent

Dean was preparing for a big Late Model race in South Boston, Va., late in 2002 when he heard the Hamlins were out of money and ready to call it quits.

He'd followed Hamlin's career closely, watching how he held his own with his drivers in inferior equipment. He knew with good equipment that Hamlin would "run away from my guys.''

So Dean offered Hamlin a ride the next week at Myrtle Beach, S.C., where Hamlin proved him right by winning the pole and finishing second.

"He won only 10 races before he went to work for me,'' Dean said. "Nobody knew how good he was. Once he got in my equipment, he won 40 races over two years.

"That's phenomenal. You won't see that on this level too often.''

Before Dean stepped up, Hamlin was prepared to give up racing and work at the trailer hitch company his dad formed as a backup plan.

"The trailer shop was getting in debt, too,'' Hamlin said. "It was a bad deal all around. All I could see was my dreams going down the tubes. "[Dean] definitely had a key role of me making it.''

Hamlin and new teammate Mark McFarland combined for 53 wins -- 25 for Hamlin, 28 for McFarland -- in 2003 to give their owner the national championship in NASCAR's weekly series.

The attention earned Dean a call from J.D. Gibbs, who was beginning a diversity program with former NFL Hall of Famer Reggie White.

Gibbs and White flew to Dean's shop in Manassas, Va., and bought three cars and a couple of trailers. As a part of the deal, they wanted Hamlin and McFarland to test the cars at Hickory [N.C.] Speedway.

Curtis Markham, a Late Model driver now employed by JGR, was so impressed with Hamlin that he phoned Gibbs and recommend he sign the young driver.

Gibbs did even though he had no place to put Hamlin for almost a year.

"Denny would call them up once a month and say, 'Hey, I'm still here. Do you want to do anything with me?' '' Mary Lou recalled. "They would say, 'Sit tight and we'll be in contact with you.' ''

That finally happened in 2004 when Hamlin ran his first Truck Series race, finishing 10th at O'Reilly Raceway Park.

Later that year, in his first Busch Series race, Hamlin finished eighth at Darlington Raceway, arguably the toughest track on the circuit.

"You kind of knew right then you had something,'' Gibbs said. "That doesn't happen too often.''

Dean already knew.

"I remember talking to Denny on the phone in '03,'' he said. "Denny felt like he had to win every race, that if he didn't he wasn't doing his job and he'd never get a shot.

"I told him, 'Just relax. Don't worry. You'll be sitting in a Cup car in two years.' ''

Mature beyond his years

Less than six laps remained last month at Martinsville Speedway and Jimmie Johnson was the only driver between Hamlin and a victory in his home state.

He pulled up beside Johnson, nudging him ever so slightly to get the No. 48 car slightly out of line. A nudge more and Hamlin could have put Johnson into the wall and cruised to the win.

"The thing is, you haven't seen Denny at his best yet. Wait until he gets a couple of years under his belt. He'll make the Chase standing on his head." - Jim Dean, former financial backer of Hamlin

Instead, he allowed Johnson to gather himself and settled for second.

As impressive as Hamlin's victories at Pocono were, this was his shining moment.

"I wouldn't have been prouder if he'd won the race,'' Dean said. "Just to process all the information he needed to in that short period of time ... I don't know how he does it.

"My head would be getting all blown up inside that helmet and I wouldn't be able to breath. That's the part that amazes me the most about what he's done.''

Hamlin faced a similar situation at Richmond when he could have wrecked NASCAR's most popular driver, Dale Earnhardt Jr., down the stretch.

"He gets all the way to Earnhardt's door in Turns 1 and 2,'' Dean recalled. "He could have moved him up the track and out of the way. But how many fans would he have lost? A ton.

"That wasn't how he wanted to get his first win. He just does the right thing for the right reasons.''

Hamlin can't remember a time in his career when he intentionally wrecked somebody to win.

"You sleep better and get a lot more respect when you do it the right way,'' he said.

Crew chief Mike Ford said he's never been around a driver so young so aware of his status in the sport.

"I know how much he wanted to win at Martinsville,'' he said. "For him to back off and not win that way tells me what a competitor he is.

"Any of these guys can go out and turn someone. There's no talent in that. He's a fan of the sport. From a competitor's side he's a racer. He wants to win and beat you, but he wants to do it in class and style.''

Gordon also was impressed.

"He has a lot of talent, but I've always said the thing that has impressed me the most is the job that he did in Martinsville,'' he said. "It's impressive to win back- to-back Pocono races, but I think it's something else to go and run as good as he has at Martinsville.

"I don't care if you run thousands of laps in a Late Model there, you get in a big heavy Cup car and it's different a deal.''

Ford noticed Hamlin's maturity on the track the first time the two tested together at Kansas. Within a few sessions, Hamlin was running the same speeds at Kurt Busch and Ryan Newman on a track he'd never seen.

"We weren't telling him what those other guys were running, but his comments were exact enough to know that he's putting the car to the point it needed to be where you could get honest feedback,'' Ford said.

"He had total confidence in what he was saying. You could see it in corners and the lines that he was running. It was like he'd been doing this forever.''

Childhood hero

Before he was old enough to see over the steering wheel Hamlin sat in his father's laps and watched Cup races, able to tell you the name of every driver and his sponsor.

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Most of the time, he held two matchbox cars and raced them during commercials. One of the cars always belonged to Bill Elliott.

Hamlin adopted Elliott as his favorite driver because he admired the way he competed. Ford, who was Elliott's crew chief a few years ago, said the two are very similar.

"Bill was always very patient,'' he said. "He knows what it takes to go fast, but he tries to get everything out of the equipment and not force the issue.

"Denny is younger and a little more aggressive, but basically the same.''

Ford pointed out that Hamlin has failed to finish only one race and has been in the top 10 in nearly 50 percent of the races.

Dean said it was the same way in Late Model, where Hamlin learned early to protect his equipment because he couldn't afford to wreck it without risk of missing the next race.

"He has amazing control over cars,'' Dean said. "You can say he's smart and this and that. He is all of those things. But he never overdrives those cars.

"Even a guy like Tony Stewart, you see him occasionally overdrive and turn the car around like he did at Dover. Denny has never done that yet where he has taken somebody out.''

That's why Ford predicted before the season that Hamlin would be in a position most rookies can't comprehend.

"He's a natural born racer,'' he said. "Some guys have to learn it. Some of them have it. You could see very quickly that he's got it. He doesn't have to think about it and work himself as hard as one of the other guys.''

Kid at heart

Hamlin was testing at Lowe's Motor Speedway in May when the scoring monitor incorrectly flashed that a fellow competitor completed a trip around the 1.5-mile track in nine seconds.

Hamlin jokingly said you couldn't run around his hauler in nine seconds, which prompted a $100 bet from a crew member. After a successful run by the crew member, Hamlin bet double or nothing that he could do it.

As he circled the front of the hauler, Hamlin reached out with his left hand to slingshot around. Instead, he ripped off almost the entire left side of his hand, forcing him to drive the next few weeks with heavy bandaging.

Breaking throughWatch a condensed version of Denny Hamlin's first victory at Pocono Get the broomHamlin completes the Pocono sweep six weeks later Sign up for TrackPass now BUY THE NEXTEL i836

"If anybody gives him a challenge he's going to go for it,'' Mary Lou said with a laugh. "I go back to when his grandmother played his first putt-putt golf game. He had a fit because she won.

"She tried to explain to him, 'Denny, you can't win every time.' But he was not satisfied. He would continue to challenge you.''

As mature as Hamlin is on the track, he's a kid at heart off of it.

Make that immature kid.

"I've got a 10-year-old that is more mature,'' Ford said jokingly.

He gets no argument from Hamlin, who almost is embarrassed when recalling the putt-putt game in which he talked trash to his grandmother until the bitter end.

"I'm the worst loser in the entire world,'' Hamlin said. "The putt-putt incident, I absolutely threw a fit. Even the last five or six years, like when we played bingo at a family reunion, if I did not win every game I'd go to pieces.''

He's the same way in golf and bowling, particularly bowling after once rolling a perfect game for nine frames.

"I'm so immature,'' Hamlin said. "Sometimes I'm like, 'Gosh, what am I doing?' ''

Fortunately, Hamlin is able to find a balance between competitive and common sense inside the car.

"Outside the track, I'm literally like trying to contain a sixth grader,'' said Hamlin, who plays more video games than a sixth grader in his spare time. "My dad always told me when I strap on the helmet I'm a completely different guy.''

Faithful follower

Clark, who has lost most of her eyesight and hearing, will be inches from the flat screen television in her Tampa, Fla., home on Sunday when the green flag drops at Phoenix.

Usually, there's somebody there to tell where her grandson is running because she can't focus on the picture and leader order at the top of the screen.

"That's what keeps her going, waiting for his races every weekend,'' Mary Lou said.

Clark lives to see Hamlin race the way Hamlin lives to race. From the time he first put together a sentence it was his goal to compete in NASCAR's premier series.

"We'd ask him what he wanted to be when he grew up and he always would say, 'I'm gonna be a racecar driver,' '' said Mary Lou, who is featured wearing a racing helmet in a television commercial with her son. "That's been his only focus his entire life.

"To know somebody who has that much of a will to pick a goal and stay with it their entire life and to get to that point, it's just amazing.''

But it's not surprising. Not to those that have followed Hamlin's career from his first go-kart race that he won after his dad explained where the gas and brakes were to winning the pole at Phoenix a year ago.

"Every time he got into something, whether it was a late model to a truck or Busch car, he popped right off the bat,'' Gibbs said.

That's why Dennis and Mary Lou were willing to sacrifice everything. That's why they continue to sacrifice, with Mary Lou still working her full-time job at AAA while running her son's fan club out of her home.

That's why Clark wrote a letter to Gordon nine years ago and still carries it around.

"To this day she has always supported Denny,'' said Mary Lou, who plans to leave her AAA job when she moves to North Carolina early next year. "All of his family has. We felt like he had what it took.

"It still doesn't seem real when we see him on TV and racing with everybody. It will probably hit us after the next couple of weeks and things slow down and we have time to think about it. It's just a dream come true.''