Hamlin aggravates old shoulder injury ahead of NASCAR Cup Series season

The hits keep coming for Denny Hamlin.

On Wednesday afternoon, ahead of the Clash at Bowman Gray Stadium, in his first media availability since leaving Phoenix Raceway after losing the NASCAR Cup Series championship, Hamlin revealed he’ll have to compete with a torn shoulder this season.

It is the same shoulder – the right – that Hamlin had offseason surgery on a few years ago, which had been re-aggravated, and then he took a fall while sorting through the rubble after a fire destroyed his parents' house in December. The same fire that took the life of his father, Dennis Hamlin. His mother, Mary Lou, is still recovering after being critically injured.

“I don’t think (the shoulder) ever healed properly,” Hamlin said. “I noticed some issues right after the (2025) season. It was nagging me a little bit; I took a little fall at my mom’s house, going through all the rubble and stuff, and it just didn’t feel right. I got it rescanned, and it re-tore again.”

Although surgery is an option, Hamlin has opted not to do it because the recovery would keep him out for the first three or four months of the season. In the winter of 2023, the Joe Gibbs Racing driver had surgery on the shoulder for a bone spur and didn’t miss a race in 2024.

Instead, Hamlin's goal is to make sure he gets through the season before he can address it in November. Doing so will mean monitoring his arm strength and range of motion, and limiting the extracurricular activities he enjoys. Those will not be a priority.

“Because that aggravates it and it certainly causes the tear to get worse,” Hamlin said. “It’s kind of hanging on. It’s torn, but it’s still got a few parts and pieces hanging on that I need to keep intact for the full year.”

Hamlin did not have a typical off-season, nor much downtime.

The finale left Hamlin reeling from the emotional toll of the championship loss, which, he said afterward, made him not want to think about driving a race car for a while. Hamlin had dominated the championship event and was coming to the final three laps when a caution set up overtime in which Kyle Larson prevailed.

At the start of December, Hamlin was in a North Carolina federal courtroom for the antitrust lawsuit against NASCAR. The suit was settled on Dec. 11. The house fire occurred on Dec. 28.

“Every day is a new challenge, and the priorities definitely shifted in the off-season doing non-racing stuff,” said Hamlin. “I think I had a day at the race shop since Phoenix. I don’t know. It’s going to take a little while to get back in the swing of things, but the car is where I’ve been doing my work for the last 20-something years. So, I think this is a good warmup weekend to that.

“It certainly has not been an easy off-season by any means. I’m sure that I’m probably in a different headspace than most of the competitors that have been rip-roaring, ready to go racing for the last month or so. I’m probably in a different spot than that. I certainly would appreciate a few more months, but I don’t have that. But we’ll have to see how it goes.”

Hamlin admitted that everything he has been through over the last few months has given him a different perspective on life. But he doesn’t want to fall into self-pity.

“I still have a fantastic life, a great family,” Hamlin said. “A lot of people go through tragedies. While what happened with my family in the off-season was highly publicized, there are probably tons of those stories of crew members having it happen in their family this off-season. It happens to them during the season that no one really knows about. So, everyone has their times where they have to go through tough moments. I think that those are building moments of your character. It’s how you respond to it.

“This season for me could go one of two ways, and I think there’s not much of a middle road. It’s going to go really one way or really the other way, and it’s up to me which way I decide to turn. Right now my focus is keeping this thing on the right track and making sure I spend these last couple of years accomplishing everything that I want to before my career is over.”