Like him or not, Denny Hamlin is one of the modern greats in NASCAR. And accept it or not, a few more wins, maybe a championship, and he’ll enter the all-timers list with the record that he has.

But it seems that the #11 driver, who has been with Joe Gibbs Racing from the start of his career, may not end it there.

This much, at least, Hamlin hinted towards in a new clip from his upcoming podcast show, Actions Detrimental.

Denny Hamlin teases an exit from JGR at the end of this year

In 2022, Joe Gibbs Racing were dealt a huge blow after they lost Kyle Busch to Richard Childress Racing. But in the coming season, it seems they may be dealt with yet another blow considering the openness with which Denny Hamlin recently discussed his future, or the lack of it, with Coach Gibbs’ team.

Hamlin described how his crew chief had asked him if he still has the “goals” and the “drive” to do well after all that he has achieved and after all that he has surrounded himself with, to which the veteran replied, “Yeah man, if I’m going to get 60 wins, I got to start going like, quickly.”

“I just feel like if you can get to 60, like that is a class that is just so rare of the drivers that are in it, that I don’t know, I just racing and winning is I believe tougher than ever because everything is more similar,” he continued.

This prompted his co-host to ask him about how many wins he’s aiming for in the 2023 season. “Four,” Hamlin said, and then followed it up with something JGR fans certainly wouldn’t want to hear.

“I’m a free agent at the end of the year. We’ll see,” he said.

The 23XI Racing co-owner then concluded with a joke as he imagined a scenario in which he got those 12 wins to get to 60 in the 2023 seasons alone.

“I tell you what, if I get to 12 and get to 60 this year, going to be hard to get me back,” Hamlin added.

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Is Hamlin, the “modern day Dale Earnhardt”?

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In a recent episode of a Dirty Mo Media discussion, spotter Brett Griffin made a big claim by comparing Hamlin to Dale Earnhardt in the way the championship-less driver–owner is going about his career on both sides of the track.

“If I look at him, he’s a modern-day Dale Earnhardt because he’s driving for one team, yet he owns another,” the spotter said.

He then compared Hamlin’s joint venture with Michael Jordan, 23XI Racing, to Earnhardt’s DEI, that the Bubba Wallace is on the same trajectory as the Intimidator’s team.

“They’re only two years old at the end of last year, both cars were in the playoffs,” Griffin said of 23XI. “The things they’ve been able to do in such a short amount of time, reminds me of the way DEI came to be.”

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