Denny Hamlin has spent years telling anyone who asks that he wants to leave NASCAR while he can still win. The Joe Gibbs Racing veteran has long pointed to the end of the 2027 Cup Series season as his finish line. The problem, at 45, is that he keeps winning, and that is making the exit far more complicated than he planned.
Hamlin's second victory of 2026 came at Nashville Superspeedway, the 62nd Cup win of his career, a tally that ties him with Jeff Gordon for third on the all-time list of wins recorded after a driver's 700th start. Only Kevin Harvick and Richard Petty have more. Form like that has left JGR president Dave Alpern openly skeptical that his driver will walk away on schedule.
"I'll believe that when I see it," Alpern joked on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.
He went further, suggesting the team may not make it easy.
"He may have to fight us to leave," Alpern said. "If he's racing like this, they'll be some conversations. I actually saw Denny yesterday and I joked about that, I said, 'Let's not get too hasty.'"
In Alpern's view, the decision will hinge on whether Hamlin still believes he can win on any given Sunday.
"The great thing about Denny, he doesn't want to do this unless he feels like he can win every weekend. Right now, he does. I think we'll get to about this time next year and we'll evaluate. If he's still running like he's running now this time next year, I'd have a hard time thinking he's leaving. But you never know."
"I want to feel like I do right now in the sense [of] knowing, every Sunday morning, 'Alright, I got a good shot to win today,'" Hamlin said on the same network. "My ego is very paranoid about the downtrend."
He knows the decline arrives for every driver. His aim is to recognise it before it lands.
"It's going to come. We don't know when it is. I just want to get ahead of it before it actually does. Sometimes you have to leave some on the table and say, 'I'm not running next year. I could, but I'm not going to.' That's what I want, is to know that I still could do it if I really, really wanted to."
It is the same crossroads Harvick reached before retiring after 2023, though, as Hamlin pointed out to him in a Fox Sports conversation, the circumstances differ. Asked whether he would have raced on in Hamlin's position, Harvick did not hesitate.
"I probably would have. If I were driving and in your situation, I probably would have kept going. But at Stewart-Haas, it was kind of at the end, and I didn't want to go to another team and learn another system."
Hamlin agreed the comparison was imperfect, noting that Harvick's team "was on its way out, and mine is still doing really well."
Behind the scenes, JGR has already begun mapping life after Hamlin. The team has hinted at Brent Crews as a possible successor, with William Sawalich, Taylor Gray and Brandon Jones among the Toyota-backed names in the organisation's development pipeline. Replacing a future Hall of Famer with 62 wins, though, is its own kind of problem, and one the team is in no rush to confront.
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*Originally published on [Motorsports Global](https://motorsports.global/article/jgr-wont-let-go-hamlin-faces-fight-over-2027-retirement). Visit for full coverage.*
