Pit This Time may earn a commission when you buy through links on this page. It never affects our coverage. Learn more.
Denny Hamlin is expected to retire from full-time racing after the 2027 NASCAR Cup Series season. Joe Gibbs Racing president Dave Alpern says the team isn’t ready to accept that yet.
“It may be his plan, but I think I’ve said before, we may tackle him if he tries to leave,” Alpern said on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio on Friday.
‘He Can Still Win Every Week’
Alpern said JGR will sit down with Hamlin this offseason, and may give him until the spring to decide how he feels.
“Denny will be one of the guys we’ll sit down with during the off season. Let’s get a little distance between the end of the season. And I think we’ll sit down with him and see what he’s thinking, how he’s feeling,” Alpern said.
“For Denny, it may be a matter of letting him get into the spring and see how he’s running. Look, I know one thing about Denny, and we so appreciate this about him: he is so competitive.
“If he doesn’t think he can win every week, he’s not going to want to do it. And as long as he thinks he can, he’s going to keep doing it.
“Based on my eyeball test, he can still win every week. When is Father Time going to catch up? I don’t know right now.”
‘Completely on His Terms’
Alpern said JGR is preparing for either outcome.
“Denny’s doing a pretty good job eluding Father Time, so again, I think he would say that’s the plan at the end of this year. Obviously, as an organization, you make contingency plans,” he said. “So I think we got to start thinking about what happens if that happens. But in the back of our minds, we’re kind of hoping it doesn’t happen.
“I think that still is a discussion that needs to happen, but we’ll do that together; I can tell you that. And if he leaves, it’ll be completely on his terms.”
Hamlin, 45, won four races and the regular-season title in 2026 and finished third in the final standings. He is also co-owner of 23XI Racing with Michael Jordan.
The Sponsor Side
Progressive recently re-signed with JGR as the anchor sponsor of Hamlin’s No. 11, and Alpern said sponsor deals are tied directly to drivers in NASCAR.
“You’ve got to have a sponsor before you can sign your driver, because that’s how we fund it in this sport,” Alpern said. “Going back to the Denny situation, again, that’s a unique dynamic in our sport: when a sponsor signs they obviously want to know who their driver is.
“And it’s tied to the driver. And so you work out things like that with people that if it’s this driver, it’s X. If it’s this driver, we’re going to talk about Y, and so that’s just something that we deal with.”
Leave a Reply