Skip to main content

Winner Winner, Chicken Dinner.

 As many of the people that read and see my blogs know, I am a huge fan of sports. Football, basketball, baseball, hockey, you name it. Keeping up with and watching both college and professional sports has been my hobby for as long back as I can remember. However, I feel like I am a fan of a not so popular sport and that is NASCAR, which stands for the National Association of Stock Car Auto Racing. 

I have been a NASCAR fan for about fifteen years now. My favorite driver has been Denny Hamlin throughout this time. Denny drives the number eleven car and his sponsor has always been FedEx. Denny is both a team owner and a driver. He and Michael Jordan are team owners of 23XI racing, 23 for Jordan and XI for Hamlin as his number is eleven. Denny drives for Joe Gibbs Racing, a different team, and has driven for them for his entire career.

There can be anywhere from 36 to 43 drivers each week fighting for the win. The odds of your favorite driver winning the race are already little to none. Each season there are 36 races and the best drivers average around four to six wins per year. Denny won eight races in 2010, six in 2019, and seven in 2020. In 2021 and 2022 he won two races each. The wins are becoming harder and harder so when they do happen, you really have to enjoy it like it's going to be the last one.

After winning Sunday's race at Kansas Speedway, Denny has 49 career wins, which is 15th all-time. This win is his first win of the 2023 season and his 4th career win at Kansas, which is the most in track history. There truly is no feeling quite like watching your favorite sports team, or in this case, race car driver, win the race. 

Denny won the race, yes, but not without a fight against Kyle Larson. On the last lap, Larson was battling a loose race car, which means the back end was wanting to come around. His car looked sketchy and really twitchy. Larson is one of the best drivers in the series, so if any driver can handle a car like that it's him. However, going into turns one and two, he got into the wall and Denny was as close as he could possibly be without touching him. He was this close in an attempt to side draft and gain momentum down the backstretch and into turns three and four. Instead, Larson came off the wall off turn two and as Denny was going to side draft, they made contact and Larson went right back into the wall. Denny snuck by and took the checkered flag. Race fans and many spectators believe Hamlin deliberately wrecked him for the win. However, many others say, believe, and agree that Denny raced the right way and shouldn't have given Larson an inch as it was the last lap and ultimately two hungry guys looking for a win that only one guy can have. 

After he was done doing his celebratory burnout, he got out of his car and the fans booed him. This wasn't much out of the ordinary as Denny is hated by nearly everyone. Since he and Michael Jordan formed to start a race team in 2021, Denny has one win as a driver and two wins as an owner in five starts at Kansas Speedway.




Labels:

Comments

  1. Ryan MinottMay 10, 2023 at 2:41 PM

    Great post Cade! I have learned a ton about all different kinds of sports through your blog and I really enjoyed it!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

My podcast with Hannah Brown

 Last semester in Principles of PR we had the same assignment as we do now with the podcast. At that time I had no idea who would be a good guest for me to have but luckily Dr. Aggie hooked me up with an excellent person in Hannah Brown. She is a PR practitioner who works with pretty much exactly what we talk about in this class; social media and marketing along with PR too, of course. I enjoyed douing this podcast because I feel like I had more flexibility to dig deeper into social media and even she said there is a big difference from the PR side of things stricly to the social media side.  Considering that this podcast only had to be 5 minutes at the least, I came up with 5 questions for her. Link:  https://soundcloud.com/user-698512429/principlesofsocialmediapodcast?si=832f844e5af244c7aaa09a51b1e05b09&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing The first question I had for her was simply asking what social media marketing is. She expla...
1 comment
Read more

Ready To Get It Over With

 I don't know about you, but spring break felt like a summer tease. I was feeling super optimistic about nearly everything, the vibes were good, I was excited about being halfway through the semester, and then I came back to school. For the most part, I'd say I'm happy, but at this point, I'm just ready to get it over with. Deep in the back of my mind I can just feel that the remainder of the semester isn't going to be easy whatsoever. There are still midterms, and before I know it, it will be time for final exams. As I was walking to my classes today I was trying to motivate myself by thinking that no other day will be as hard as today. Coming back from break can be difficult and getting back into a groove can feel like it's impossible. I hope I'm not alone in saying that this week is a great week to get back into shape.With that being said, I hope everyone had a good spring break and enjoyed doing what makes you happy with people that make you happy. I fee...
3 comments
Read more

The Master of The Masters

The most prestigious golf tournament took place over the weekend in Augusta, Georgia. This tournament, which is the Masters, is much like the Super Bowl or the World Series in the sense that whoever wins it definitely deserved to win it and also to be apart and play in it. The best golfers in the world battle the already tough course under sunny and dry conditions, but when the weather becomes bad, good golf becomes difficult for many. Jon Rahm played his best golf at the perfect time, which was Sunday, the final day of the tournament. You obviously need to play great from the time the tournament starts, which is Thursday, and be consistent everyday and every round if you want to have a shot at the green jacket and a nice payday on Sunday. Going into the final day, many believed Brooks Koepka would seal the deal. Others were picking Rahm due to his momentum. Kopeka started off great but declined as time went on. He had a two-shot lead over Rahm going into Sunday and like I said, many w...
4 comments
Read more