The Rush: Denny Hamlin on rooting for his rival, golfing with MJ and meeting Dale Jr. in the most unexpected place

NASCAR driver Denny Hamlin stops by The Rush to discuss the bizarre feeling of simultaneously rooting for and against Bubba Wallace, his friendship with Michael Jordan and golfing against him, winning the Cup Series to avoid becoming the Dan Marino of NASCAR, hiring female drivers to race his car, and his improbable meeting of Dale Earnhardt Jr. in the most unexpected place. PLUS, Denny is helping small business owners get grants for up to $50K through the FedEx Small Business Grant Contest.

Video Transcript

DENNY HAMLIN: And Dale, Jr. actually-- interesting story is I was down in Daytona when he won the 2004 Daytona 500. I was there signing my deal with JGR. And so I was a guest of his. And I remember carrying his trophy from victory lane to his bus and thinking, wow, will I ever have one of these Daytona 500 trophies? And now I've got more than him.

JARED QUAY: What's up, everybody? I'm here with NASCAR driver Denny Hamlin on behalf of FedEx. How we doing today, Denny?

DENNY HAMLIN: I'm good.

JARED QUAY: I gotta admit, I'm no NASCAR expert, but I did watch the Daytona 500. And that was some of the craziest stuff I've ever seen.

- --runs on top--

- Oh!

- Teammates.

- Around they go, and a hard crash-- Kyle Busch.

JARED QUAY: In a way you were competing against yourself. 'Cause you were driving in the race, but so was Bubba Wallace, who drives a car you own.

DENNY HAMLIN: Yeah.

JARED QUAY: How was that?

DENNY HAMLIN: It was different. I mean, I knew that it wasn't gonna be real for me and me kind of understand how big this is until I saw the car on the racetrack. And then when I saw the car on the racetrack beside me, that's when it became real again.

And so, yeah, it was certainly a surreal experience. I know that myself and Michael worked really hard this off-season making this happen. And, yeah, it's a big deal for our sport. And we're hopefully gonna get Bubba Wallace in victory lane too.

JARED QUAY: Who you think Jordan was rooting for, you or Bubba?

DENNY HAMLIN: He says he's got two winners now. He's got two guys. He says he's happy with either one, even though he only owns one. We're friends that go way, way back. And I've been a Jordan Brand athlete now for 12 years. So this is a-- he says he's got two winners.

JARED QUAY: Speaking of being friends with Jordan, you ever play golf or basketball? And if so, how much money did you win or lose?

DENNY HAMLIN: I'm smart enough to know not to go on a basketball court with him. I went to a camp, maybe, I don't know, 10 years ago where-- I mean, the kids were egging him on. Hey, can you still dunk? And, yes, he could still dunk.

And we do play golf. And I would estimate he posts 250 rounds a year at least. So I played once in the last 50, 60 days because I was busy putting this race team together. But I took it to him pretty good.

JARED QUAY: And you still won? Oh!

DENNY HAMLIN: And we played pretty straight up.

JARED QUAY: You've been in a bunch of top-5's, top-10 finishes in the Cup Series. But you haven't been able to bring one home just yet. You don't want to be the Dan Marino of racing. How important is it for you to win one of those Cup Series?

DENNY HAMLIN: It's important. I mean, we've won-- you know, I think we're now number two on the list of winners in history. I think we've gotta get to 50, so 6 more, to be the winningest guy without a championship. But if you don't win a final race, you don't win the championship. I value wins as much as anything, because those wins are just as hard to get as it is to win that final race. And we were able to do it 13 times over the last 2 years.

JARED QUAY: You're racing at a Homestead on Sunday. And you'll be trying to win some money and working on putting some money in other people's pockets. How can the viewers learn how to get some money?

DENNY HAMLIN: You can go to fedex.com/grantcontest. And you can sign up to try to get a small business grant, which is $50,000. They're gonna award 12 small businesses that grant. But really, you can do it through March 9.

Again, we're gonna have the paint scheme on the car this weekend at Homestead. You'll see the small business "we're open" sign on it. So it's very cool. So a great promotion they're doing to kind of give back to the local communities.

My dad owned a small business for all of my life. And it's essentially what I would be doing if I wasn't racing. We had a trailer and hitch shop, you know, almost like a U-Haul type business.

JARED QUAY: But you still got small business in your back pocket, just in case you ever want to retire. You can go out and just be a local guy in the community helping out your peers.

DENNY HAMLIN: Yeah, I mean, I guess right now I do have a small business in a race team. I don't know how really small it is, considering what it costs to put that car on the racetrack.

JARED QUAY: [LAUGHTER] Women are breaking the glass ceiling in all kinds of sports, including car racing. And now that you're an owner, you down to hire a female driver?

DENNY HAMLIN: I'm down to hire anybody who's good at what they do. You know, we see barriers being broken with Bubba Wallace, Hailie Deegan, there's Tracy Trotter. There's a lot of really good young talent out there that are both male and female and different race. So certainly I believe that the sport is more wide open than it's ever been. And as a team owner, it's certainly what we will look at when we look to hire new talent in the future.

JARED QUAY: Also on this show, we've had Dale, Jr. and Kurt Busch on "The Rush." You got any funny stories about those guys?

DENNY HAMLIN: Yeah. I mean, we used to have some wild days back in the day. Dale, Jr. actually-- really we started talking through the internet. You know, as crazy as it seems and as popular as he was, it started in AOL chat rooms and iRacing back then, where you could race online.

And that's kind of where our relationship formed. And he invited me to come down for the 2004 weekend and hang out with him. And I actually roomed with Martin Truex that weekend, who I'm now teammates with. So it's crazy how it all worked out.

JARED QUAY: AOL-- like, how did you know it was actually Dale, Jr. and not somebody catfishing you?

DENNY HAMLIN: I had to hear his voice. He told me he would call me to work out the arrangements for me staying in Daytona that weekend. And once I heard his voice, I felt very confident. And of course, I'm looking up-- all right, is this the area code down i Charlotte? OK, I feel good. Because I'm about to go on a 9 and 1/2 hour drive all the way to Daytona-- it would've sucked to have gotten catfished in that.

JARED QUAY: Aw, man, that's a crazy story, man. Well, look here, man-- thank you for rushing with me today. You guys please tune in this weekend to the Homestead. And obviously thanks to FedEx for trying to help out small businesses. Thank you, man. Denny, let's get a W, baby.

DENNY HAMLIN: Yeah. Good to see you.