Denny Hamlin is the oldest driver in the Joe Gibbs Racing Cup Series program today, along with Martin Truex Jr, and over the years, he has had some pretty iconic teammates. Two such individuals were Kyle Busch and Tony Stewart. Both drivers will go down in history as two of the greatest of all time and Hamlin’s relationship with both of them is similar. The driver of the #11 car is quite competitive which prevented him from being good friends with them when they were teammates.

Denny Hamlin reveals what eventually made Kyle Busch and Tony Stewart his good friends

It’s like an unwritten rule in motorsports that your teammate is your biggest rival. Although there is a lot of teamwork that happens out on the track, at the end of the day, they are the only ones with exactly the same machinery as you. So they become sort of like the measuring stick. This was especially true back in Denny Hamlin’s younger days when all of the teams did not have the same car and he had a love-hate relationship with former teammate Kyle Busch as a result, who is also quite competitive himself.

“My respect for Kyle is pretty high. I really have a ton of respect for Kyle and I almost envision our relationship very similar to mine and Tony Stewart’s where we actually became better friends when we were not teammates. I think when we were teammates, there was too much of competition. I’ll never forget the very first test where Kyle came over and we were at Atlanta, we kept one-upping each other. Every time we would go out we were making each other go faster and Kyle was like…”you know that I’m the man here now” and I’m like “oh really?” So it was always friendly competition but also a fierce competition between us but I just respect the hell out of his talent,” he said in a recent episode of Kevin Harvick‘s Happy Hour podcast.

The driver of the #11 car, just a few moments earlier, revealed some of the instances where he tangled with Rowdy when they were teammates and while they were few, things got a bit feisty at times.

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Veteran Joe Gibbs Racing reveals a couple of tensed moments with Rowdy

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For two drivers like Denny Hamlin and Kyle Busch to co-exist as long as they did as teammates is quite incredible. What’s even more incredible is the fact that they rarely had confrontations. But that does not mean that they never crossed paths as teammates. The driver of the #11 car outlined instances at Charlotte and Atlanta as tracks when there was palpable friction between the two.

“I never really had a lot of confrontation, I did have a few moments. I mean there was the All-Star race at Charlotte where he thought that I air-blocked him into the wall. I was in the lead, I don’t know how that happened. And then there’s other, at Atlanta where we were kind of racing each other a little silly at times during the race where there was a difference of opinion,” the 43-year-old added.

A full-blown Hamlin-Busch feud is something hardcore NASCAR fans would have loved to see as both of them were unapologetic and highly competitive.

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