Parents’ pain, driver’s gain
No shortage of love, sacrifice behind Denny Hamlin’s success
By RICK MINTER
Mary Lou Hamlin’s eyes still light up when she talks about her dream car. “It was a red ’67 Rally Sport convertible Camaro,” she said.

“His mom and dad raised him well.” CURTIS MARKHAM spotter for Denny Hamlin (left)

Her husband, Dennis Hamlin, felt much the same way about his favorite classic car. “It was a ’32 Ford,my dream car,” he said. “I wanted one all my life, and I finally found one.”

Both cars are gone, sacrificed in what seemed at times to be a fleeting dream to get their son, Denny, a start in NASCAR racing.

But the dream worked out. Denny, 25, landed a job with Joe Gibbs Racing, and became the first rookie to make the Chase for the Nextel Cup.

That, and his success this season, which includes a victory in the nonpoints Budweiser Shootout and two victories at Pocono Raceway, make the sacrifices the Hamlin family made seem well worth it, they say.

Dennis Hamlin said that he and Mary Lou often had to make tough decisions about their son’s career. Stockcar racing, even at the Late Model level, was all but beyond their financial reach.

“We hocked the house two or three times, used up the 401(k) plan a couple of times,” Dennis said. Even though his son won often, the racing bills were outrunning his winnings.

Dennis Hamlin

So Dad’s ’32 Ford had to go, sold to buy race-car parts and engines. Then his ’69 SS Camaro and the ’57 Chevrolet.

Finally, there was nothing left to hock or sell except Mary Lou’s red Camaro.

“She loved that car so much,” Dennis said. “I hated to part with it, but it got down to the end, and I said, ‘What do you want to do?’

“She said, ‘Sell it. There’s nothing else we can do.’ ”

It had been that way for the Hamlin family since Denny made his first laps in a go-kart.

“I saw his potential the first time I watched him drive a gokart at 7 years old,” said Dennis Hamlin, who raced stock cars for a time. “He wasn’t scared of anything. He could get on anything and just fly.”

It was much later, when he won the pole for the Cup race at Phoenix last fall, that Denny knew what his dad believed all along — that he had the talent to succeed in NASCAR’s elite series.

“That was the defining moment for me,” he said.

The journey from that dusty go-kart track in Virginia to the Nextel Cup series was a step-by-step process. The Hamlins started at the bottom rung, and as soon as Denny conquered one class, his family moved him up a notch. It was the same when he started racing cars. He first drove a Ministock, then worked his way up to Late Models, the elite division of weekly racing.

Mary Lou Hamlin

But the Hamlins hit their financial ceiling there. Dennis owned a trailerhitch business in Chesterfield, Va. It was Career Plan B for Denny.

But Denny’s career as a trailer-hitch installer ended about three years ago, when Joe Gibbs Racing purchased a Late Model car from Denny to use in Gibbs’ diversity program. As part of the deal, Hamlin traveled to Hickory Motor Speedway in North Carolina to shake down the car before the young drivers in the program took the wheel.

Curtis Markham, a veteran Late Model driver now in the employ of Gibbs, was at Hickory that day.

“Denny was begging me to get him a test in one of our cars,” Markham said. “Finally, he took the Late Model out, and I saw what great car control he had. I said right there, ‘We need to hire this kid.’ ”

The other Gibbs personnel at the test suggested Markham call team president J.D. Gibbs.

“I called J.D. right then from my cellphone,” Markham said. “He said, ‘Are you sure?’

“I said, ‘We need to get him before somebody else does.’ ”

The papers soon were signed, but there were still some anxious moments for Denny and his parents.

“They put him under contract, but Denny sat around about a year,” Dennis Hamlin said. “He’d call them up and ask, ‘Do you need me to do anything? Go anywhere?’ They said, ‘Just hang loose.We’ve got something for you.’ ”

Although his son quickly became a rising star in NASCAR’s Busch Series, Dennis Hamlin’s worrying didn’t end until the Budweiser Shootout at Daytona in February, his son’s first victory in NASCAR’s elite division.

“A ton of bricks fell off my shoulders right there,” he said. “My job was done.”

He and Mary Lou traveled to most of the races this past season. Mary Lou often worked in a booth at the track for her longtime employer, AAA, but she plans to retire soon and tend to her son’s growing fan club.

And she has a few fans of her own, now that she appears with her son in a commercial for his sponsor, FedEx. In the commercial, she’s baking cookies and wearing a racing helmet when her son uses the radio in his car to let her be the first to know he won a race.

“They asked me if I’d do it, and I said, ‘Sure,’ ” she said. “So they dressed me in that funky outfit, and I baked cookies.”

Although her son has said he would like to one day replace the classic car she sold to finance his racing, he’s first going to get Dad a new set of wheels.

“I’m thinking a new Corvette,” Denny said.

That’s the side of Hamlin that really impresses Markham, the man who got him the job at Gibbs and is now his spotter during races and practice.

“To be successful here, you’ve got to appreciate what you’ve got, and Denny’s parents taught him that,” Markham said. “His mom and dad raised him well.”