HOMESTEAD, Fla. -- It all comes down to one race, a singular event that in many ways will define him. One strong performance will change his life, while a mistake will force him to start all over again. Denny Hamlin is on the cusp of a career-altering experience, leading the Sprint Cup points by a slim margin entering the season finale, and feeling all the pressure that goes along with that position. But in some ways, he's already been here before.

Long before there was Homestead-Miami Speedway in 2010, the race that will determine the champion of NASCAR's premier series, there was Darlington Raceway in 2004, and the race that would make or break Hamlin's career. They talk about how he looks uneasy these days, with a four-time defending champion breathing hard right behind him and a cagey series veteran a little further back. They wonder if he can handle an atmosphere where any misstep can be disastrous. They look at him, and then his older, more experienced, more decorated competition, and think -- there's no way he's going to make it.

Six years ago, J.D. Gibbs thought the same thing when he put Hamlin in a car for a race in the then-Busch Series at Darlington, a track the young driver had never seen from behind the wheel, with a vague promise that a strong performance might merit something bigger on the other end. "I'm thinking, there ain't no way," recalled Gibbs, president of Joe Gibbs Racing. "We'll let him take a shot here. And sure enough, he was second quick at Darlington, in his first time there."

Gibbs learned then something many others have since discovered -- underestimate Denny Hamlin at your own risk. Sure, there's pressure on Hamlin this weekend in South Florida, where he leads Jimmie Johnson by 15 points and Kevin Harvick by 46 with NASCAR's greatest prize on the line. But there was also pressure on him when his family-owned late model was being sold to pay the mortgage. There was pressure on him when he was given one big shot to make it at the national level. There was pressure on him when he was in contention with other drivers for the No. 11 car. There was pressure on him to meet the standards of an organization now vying for its fourth championship in the sport's premier series.

And every time -- every time -- Hamlin delivered.

"He was lucky, but he's earned everything he's got. You can't say anything negative, because he did it on his own," Jim Dean, Hamlin's former late model car owner, said by telephone from his shop in Manassas, Va. "When he got the opportunity, he exceeded it and he made the most of it. He was able to just look at it like he's just racing another group of guys. He wasn't awestruck, he didn't let it go to his head. What he's done with his opportunity, all that credit is his."

Really, it never should have happened. The money had dried up, the family-owned late model was being sold, and Hamlin seemed destined to make a living welding hitches at his father's trailer shop. He was relaying this sad news to someone in line to sign in at South Boston Speedway in southern Virginia, for what very well could have been Hamlin's final race. Had Dean been a few people further back in line, the conversation would never have caught his ear. He never would have known that Hamlin didn't have a ride for the next weekend's event in Myrtle Beach, S.C. And he never would have offered to put Hamlin in one of his cars, like the one the driver would win 25 times in the next year.

"I watched him all year long running [against] my cars, and we had the best of everything," Dean remembered. "He was racing with like one sway bar. He had like a few extra springs and a couple of extra shocks, but they had nothing. Their trailer was like a ghost town for equipment. They didn't have anything. ... Basically his parents had to sell the car because they couldn't afford to get their mortgage paid off. I was either going to pay for him to race at Myrtle Beach, or put him in one of my cars. Had I not heard he wasn't going to be there, I just would have shown up in Myrtle Beach and not seen him there."

Suddenly, Hamlin went from the brink of early retirement to driving for one of the top late model teams in the region, racking up victory after victory in Dean's cars. And still, small miracles had to occur in order for him to take the next step. One was that NFL great Reggie White wanted to start a minority development program under the Gibbs umbrella, and that he turned to Dean for equipment. White, J.D. Gibbs and team Nationwide Series coordinator Steve DeSouza flew to Manassas and bought three cars, two trailers, and several parts. Why Dean? J.D. Gibbs said they wanted reliable, proven equipment, and Dean had a reputation for turning out some of the best. Of course, there was something else, too.

"He was a Redskins guy," said J.D., whose father Joe won three Super Bowls coaching the Washington football team, "so that didn't hurt."

Gibbs and White brought about 15 diversity candidates (Aric Almirola and Chris Bristol were eventually selected) to Hickory Motor Speedway for a tryout, but they wanted someone to shake down Dean's cars first. Hamlin was the natural. "We said, he's used to the equipment, so come on down and do it," Gibbs remembered. What they didn't expect was for Hamlin, fresh off a victory in a big event at Hickory the previous fall, to turn laps in both cars fast enough to set new track records. Curtis Markham, himself a former Virginia late model driver who was present at the test -- and is now Hamlin's spotter -- later pulled Gibbs aside.

"Curtis Markham was the one who said, 'I swear man, that Denny, we have to look at him. He's something,' " J.D. Gibbs said. "Curtis is a late model guy, so he knows what he was looking at."

Gibbs met Hamlin for the first time at dinner later that night. They decided to give Hamlin a first chance in five Truck Series events, in vehicles owned by Steve Prescott and backed by the Gibbs Performance brand. In the first, at O'Reilly Raceway Park in the summer of 2004, Hamlin finished 10th. In November of that same year, on a weekend that would go a long way toward shaping the outcome of the inaugural Chase, the Gibbs team presented Hamlin with his big opportunity in the Nationwide race at Darlington. Dean remembers the bar being set at a top-10 finish. Expectations were low after a test where Hamlin "knocked the wall down, scraped the whole thing up," J.D. Gibbs remembered.

Then Hamlin unloaded and posted the second-fastest speed in opening practice. Then he qualified toward the back and worked his way up through the field. Then he finished eighth, opening eyes and convincing the Gibbs team that they had someone they wanted on the Nationwide circuit full-time. "At the time we had Mike Bliss driving for us," J.D. Gibbs said. "I love Mike. But the reality was, Mike wasn't going to be our future Cup guy. So we talked to the [sponsor] Rockwell Automation guys, and they said, yeah, we'll do it. [Hamlin] went straight from late model, a few Trucks, into Nationwide."

The pressures then were not unlike those Hamlin faces now. "It's pretty similar to those, but there were a lot more variables," Hamlin said. "There was no set number in which I had to finish in those races. It was just do the best you could, and obviously this weekend is more of a numbers game than that. I'd relate it to about the same, but for me I've been treating these last few days just as if it was any other race weekend. I've just been busier."

And now it comes down to one race, and the potential for another remarkable chapter in a young but already remarkable career. Even though Hamlin has the points lead, the general consensus seems to be that he can't hold on. Tell that to those who watched first-hand as he resurrected his late model career, as he wowed executives from one of NASCAR's top organizations, as he shined in every opportunity he had to step forward. There will be plenty of pressure on Hamlin on Sunday. He's faced pressure at every step of his career. And to this point, he's risen above it all.

"It's crazy. Crazy," J.D. Gibbs said. "Like from a movie."

The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer.