Hamlin has enjoyed immense success in his Cup career, but his detractors love to point out the one thing he has never done is win a series championship, although he has been in position several times over the years.
The 43-year-old driver of Joe Gibbs Racing’s No. 11 Toyota, in fact, is once again in good shape to contend for the series title this season, with three wins in hand already and ranked fourth in the series standings.
Trailing leader Kyle Larson by 42 points with six races remaining, Hamlin still has a viable shot to win the regular season title and enter the playoffs as the No. 1 seed.
Hamlin admitted he has shifted his goals over the years, but it has always been in relation to how many face victories he hoped to achieve.
“To get inside the top-10 of all-time winners – that’s the goal I can achieve week in and week out, right? Certainly, always have goals of winning a championship and that goes over a long period of time,” Hamlin said Saturday at Pocono Raceway.
“But week-to-week, that’s what fuels me to continue to go to the race track and do this grind every week, is to try to nail down victories. To me, I think when this is all said and done, all these different formats have changed, cars have changed over time, but the wins still stand as equal.
“I think that’s why I value them so much.”
Hamlin said at one point he probably thought it would be phenomenal to earn 50 Cup wins in a career. Now he sits at 54 and could have had several more had circumstances played out differently in races.
“As times change, and you start to pick up your performance, you change your goals, and that certainly has changed. You know, I just feel so much more agitated by the ones that we (thought we) had won,” he said.
“There's been three this year, leading inside five to go and a late-race caution changed everything. So, I think if you want to get to those goals that you want to win, you have to capitalize on all the moments.
“You never know when the performance will continue to stay at this rate for the years to come. You do know you have it now, so you try to capitalize.”
This weekend’s race is certainly another opportunity for Hamlin to add to his win total.
Seven of Hamlin’s career wins have come at Pocono, including three in the last seven races and his first career win way back in 2006.
“This track and Indy, for whatever reason, have always been the tell-tale of where your team really stands because you have to have such good execution on pit road, your strategy has to be good and you have those three things, low drag, high downforce, high horsepower,” Hamlin said.
“Those are the things you have to have to be fast in the Cup Series week in and week out and this track in particular really magnifies it. So, I think I’ve just had a really good team that figures this out and over time, I’ve given them the information they’ve needed to build me fast cars.
“I think it’s just my driving style of being easy in the corner, hard off the corner works when you have these long straightaways.”
