The Charlotte courtroom was already humming when Denny Hamlin took the stand. Everyone expected a few hours of charter talk and lawyer-speak. Instead, they got fireworks, sarcasm, and one bombshell text message that had jaws dropping.

By the time NASCAR’s attorney dropped line after line of tough questions, the room felt more like a Sunday showdown at Bristol than a federal antitrust trial.

Denny Hamlin goes scorched earth on NASCAR

NASCAR’s lawyer Lawrence Buterman came out swinging, throwing everything from driver contracts to revenue splits at Hamlin. Every time Buterman tried to paint 23XI as hypocritical for having its own exclusivity rules, Denny Hamlin fired right back with one sentence.

“We’re not a monopoly, you are.”

He said it so many times it almost became the chorus of the day.

When Buterman brought up the September 6 letter explaining why 23XI wouldn’t sign the charter deal, Hamlin didn’t flinch. He called NASCAR’s so-called concessions “small tweaks” and ripped the seven-year flat payout as ridiculous.

“You force us to buy all the cars and parts, but we don’t own any of it. How stupid is that?” he said.

He compared it to renting a house forever, while the landlord keeps raising the rent and never lets you paint the walls.

The Team Owner Council got the same treatment. Hamlin called it window dressing.

“Anytime they feel threatened, they create a committee to make it look collaborative, but there’s no vote, no veto, no power.”

He even joked they could make teams race in Dubai tomorrow, and nobody could stop them.

Then came the Driver Ambassador Program. Hamlin admitted it puts money in his pocket but said he hates it anyway because it forces teams to loan their stars to NASCAR’s sponsors and give up forty percent of the cash.

Buterman tried a cheap shot, asking, “So you don’t want drivers to get paid?”

Hamlin smiled and shut it down. “Teams pay drivers, not NASCAR. And most drivers don’t win the number of races I do.”

The real gasp came when Buterman pulled up a text where Hamlin asked Michael Jordan to find someone to buy him out of 23XI. You could hear the air leave the room. But Hamlin didn’t panic. He explained that the reason he said that was because he wanted the success or failure of 23XI to depend on his own terms, and not under somebody’s control.

And that frustrated request to ‘buy him out’ was just his way to make the team owners realize the seriousness of it and get their attention. Which he eventually got, as Hamlin mentioned that they eventually ‘figured it out’. It was just a normal disagreement, the kind every partnership has.

End of story. Still, the fact that the text existed at all had everyone wondering what else happened behind those closed doors.

The same week Hamlin was battling lawyers in Charlotte, his fiancée Jordan Fish reminded everyone there’s a softer side to the story.

From courtroom drama to delivery room comedy

Back in June, Fish gave birth to their son Jameson Drew, and the way she tells it, the whole thing played out like a feel-good movie.

Taylor took fifty minutes, Molly took nine, so Jordan figured Jameson would be quick too. Nope. She started pushing at 10:10 a.m., and the little guy took his sweet time, finally arriving at 1:53 p.m. after some complications. The nurses rolled in a mirror so she could watch, and Hamlin turned into the world’s most attentive coach, handing out water, applying lip balm, keeping the mood light.

At one point, he asked how her lips were feeling. Jordan Fish, high on every drug known to medicine, cracked, “Which ones?” The entire room lost it—nurses, doctor, everybody. She said it felt like a sitcom scene she wished someone had filmed. Jameson came out eight pounds four ounces, healthy and perfect, and big sisters Taylor and Molly haven’t stopped hugging him since.

Hamlin even skipped the Mexico race to be there, proof that no matter how heated the courtroom gets or how big the fight with NASCAR becomes, some things still come first. One day, he’s telling a federal jury the sport is broken, the next, he’s putting lip balm on his fiancée and laughing through labor. Same guy, two very different battles, and somehow he’s still standing in the middle of both.