Denny Hamlin once said, “I would say…20% is luck when it comes to winning a championship.” While the JGR driver may not have attained that 20% in his NASCAR Cup Series career yet, he got close to 100% elsewhere. During the sport’s visit to Las Vegas Motor Speedway over the weekend, the Joe Gibbs Racing driver hit a pot of gold. That was before he went to the racetrack, where Lady Luck must have grown tired and left, as his fortunes did not carry over to the LVMS.
Denny Hamlin could only piece together a 25th-place finish after falling prey to a storm of pit road penalties. But these woes were easily stamped out by his preceding victory – not on the racetrack, but in the dazzling casinos of Sin City. He seems to have taken inspiration from his 23XI Racing co-owner Michael Jordan, who famously once said, “I don’t have a gambling problem. I love gambling.”
Denny Hamlin breaks down his jackpot story
The 54-time Cup Series race winner had a solid chance coming to Vegas. Denny Hamlin owns one victory earned in 2021 along with 6 top-fives at the 1.5-mile oval track. However, Lady Luck decided to shine her beams upon him a little before the Pennzoil 400 race was flagged off. Hamlin paid a visit to the venues that Sin City is famous for – the casinos. Hamlin aimed “to make sure I don’t pay for rooms in this city.” But the JGR veteran ended up being able to sponsor ten times that. He also admitted that was “the first time I played slots,” – and his first time turned into a lucky charm.
By the end of his casino trips, Denny Hamlin accrued a lump sum of 330 grand – leaving fans and peers gaping with awe. His social media was flooded with questions about his moves, and in a recent ‘Actions Detrimental’ episode, he opened up, saying, “I watched Austin play this Buffalo game, and he’s been playing this thing for years… He was winning and he was just playing 7 dollars a hand. When he would win it was a few hundred bucks. I was just like, that’s not going to move the needle for me, like on the excitement level… I’m only willing to invest 11,000 in this thing, but I’ll do 300 a hand. I’m gonna get at least a fair amount – 30 hands or so, 40 hands in this thing.”
Armed with $11,000 and the undeniable blessings of his friend Michael Jordan, Denny Hamlin entered the casino ready to take the loot, and the first night of his Las Vegas adventure turned into gold! His big investment paid off: “It never went down below 8. 10 hands in, it was a significant amount – I hit the bonus there. Then it went up and up. The original 11 grand never went hardly down at all. At the end of the night, you saw the 126… there was also a credit there of 50 or 60 or something… I end up winning somewhere around 170-ish on night one… So they paid me cash, the 126, and then they gave me a ticket for the remaining 50-something.”
NASCAR, Motorsport, USA Pennzoil 400 presented by Jiffy Lube Mar 5, 2023 Las Vegas, Nevada, USA NASCAR Cup Series driver Denny Hamlin 11 leads the field for the restart of the Pennzoil 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Las Vegas Las Vegas Motor Speedway Nevada USA, EDITORIAL USE ONLY PUBLICATIONxINxGERxSUIxAUTxONLY Copyright: xGaryxA.xVasquezx 20230305_gav_sv5_077
Yet Denny Hamlin was hardly done. He took his first night’s winnings and went for round 2 the next day. “Then the second night, I took that ticket, put it in there, and said okay, I’m only willing to go down 35. And so it never even sniffed 35, it just started hitting again. And then it started hitting again… We won another 160… and I cashed out. The casino didn’t like the strategy… I was using up all the credits of the 52 that I put in. Every time I would hit a significant win amount over 10,000, I would say, give me cash – instead of transferring it to my balance… Needless to say, it was a wildly successful slot machine.”
Casinos hate when you win, and unsurprisingly, they keep Hamlin’s account on hold after all those winnings. While Denny Hamlin retired his iconic quote, “I beat your favorite driver,” in 2024, after his stint at Vegas, ‘I beat your favorite casino,’ must have been on the tip of his tongue as he walked out with a bag full of cash.
Fortune flooded Denny Hamlin in Las Vegas. Sadly, the same stroke of luck faded out by the time he reached the racetrack.
Hamlin’s streak of misery continued
A NASCAR fan aptly summed up Denny Hamlin’s early success in Las Vegas. “Bro’s gonna use up all his luck at the slot machines instead of the race track.” That is exactly what happened as Hamlin could not work on his 15th-place starting spot in Las Vegas. An early-race pit road speeding violation relegated him to the back of the Cup Series grid.
The No. 11 Toyota covered track positions subsequently, rebounding inside the top ten. However, the lap 232 caution period resulted in a slow pit stop and Hamlin could not keep up. Eventually, his 25th-place finish led to a worse result in the championship standings. Hamlin was demoted five spots on the points chart as a result of his penalty and finish.
This bad luck on the racetrack continued from the previous weekend in Phoenix. During the last two laps, Denny Hamlin and Christopher Bell fought hard for the lead, but ultimately Bell emerged victorious. Hamlin had reflected on his struggle with his teammate: “It’s so hard, especially [racing] a teammate. because I mean, we could come out of here looking like fools if we don’t win, one of the two of us, especially controlling the race on the last restart on the last lap. So it’s really, really hard. But, you know, it’s the first time I think I’ve raced Bell for a race win in that kind of scenario. So I just wish I was on the inside, not on the outside.”
Denny Hamlin’s 20+ streak of races without a win continues, as we move to Homestead-Miami Speedway this week. Hamlin will hope that his state of birth, Florida, might provide him with more luck than the casinos in Vegas, as it looks like he needs it all to get back to winning ways. What do you think? Will Hamlin break his winless duck next week after a successful run at the slot machine? Let us know in the comments!
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