Denny Hamlin odds to win Nextel Cup

Written by Brit Fryer

Sunday, 11 February 2007

CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- To hear Joe Gibbs tell it, his driver and NASCAR's newest star, Denny Hamlin, has magical powers inside a race car.

"Denny just seems to have a gift," Gibbs said.

Hamlin enters his second season in the No. 11 FedEx Chevrolet fielded by Joe Gibbs Racing. WagerWeb.com has Denny Hamlin +1200 (Bet $100 to win $1200) odds to win the Nextel Cup Championship.

As a rookie in 2006, Hamlin, a humble and likable Virginian, won the season-opening Budweiser Shootout at Daytona, followed it up with a summer sweep at Pocono Raceway, qualified for the Chase for the Nextel Cup and ended up third in the championship. And all this came only a few years after Hamlin was a lowly late-model racer in Virginia and the Carolinas.

"Honestly, every single thing he's touched (turns to gold)," Gibbs said. "We put him in the FedEx car because we decided we were going to put him in just to see what he looked like. And for him to do what he did, I was blown away.

"To me, it made no sense. He's just real, real talented. That's what it is. He has a gift. I think that shows you in this sport that no matter how much you've driven, some guys are gifted."

Gibbs' words put Hamlin in esteemed company. The coach of the NFL's Washington Redskins compared Hamlin to the MVP of Sunday's Super Bowl XLI in Miami.

"It's like all sports," Gibbs said, "all of us want to play quarterback, but then some guys are (Peyton) Mannings."

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Strictly Business: Toyota's initial foray into Nextel Cup racing forced car owner Jack Roush to rethink his business strategy. Roush fields five Fords in NASCAR's premier series and plans to take on a partner to help combat the "deep pockets" of the Japanese manufacturer.

That partner is expected to be John Henry, owner of the Boston Red Sox. The deal is not complete, however.

"I think that [Toyota will] carry their money and carry their technology and try to put the rest of us in a catch-up scenario, and I'm trying to be ready for that," Roush said. "They've got the deep pockets and the wherewithal to step outside the box and to pay more for a service or for a technology than sound business practices would otherwise justify.

"Part of the reason we're discussing doing that (taking on a partner) is to be able to feel like we can stand the pressure of having a round of negotiations with sponsors that may not be rich enough to cover everything that we're spending, or be ahead of where we are to negotiate with our drivers in the face of offers that they'd have to do other things."

Built for Endurance: Juan Pablo Montoya always had a flare for the dramatic, and he didn't disappoint in writing chapter two with Chip Ganassi Racing.

Three weeks before the start of the NASCAR season, where Montoya hopes to make waves right off the bat, the Colombian co-drove the No. 01 Lexus Riley Daytona Prototype with veteran road racer Scott Pruett and Mexican upstart Salvador Duran to the overall victory in the recent Rolex 24.

Montoya (+4,000 on WagerWeb.com to win the Nextel Cup title) joined Mario Andretti as the only drivers to win the Indianapolis 500, an American open-wheel championship, a Formula One race and an endurance event at Daytona Int'l Speedway.

But his celebration was short lived. After a quick press conference and bite to eat, Montoya jet-setted to 1.5-mile Las Vegas Motor Speedway to shake down Ganassi's No. 42 Dodge.

"I think the oval is all about the feedback you get out of the car," Montoya said. "Probably the mile-and-a-half tracks are the hardest ones there are. You go in, you get out of the gas, you get back on it. The car twitches, I'm not taking any risks. At the same time you want to run fast, so it's like as soon as you get a little bit comfortable you start attacking and attacking and attacking and going a little faster."

Nuts and Bolts: More than 90 cars with 56 teams participated in the two-day test session last week at Las Vegas. Elliott Sadler, in the No. 19 Evernham Motorsports Dodge, posted the fastest lap at 188.772 miles per hour. ? The Feb. 28 through March 1 car of tomorrow test at Bristol Motor Speedway is open to the public. ? Baseball legend Cal Ripken Jr. will drive the pace car for the Feb. 18 Daytona 500. ? Mark Martin, now at Ginn Racing, probably will run a few Busch Series races this season for Roush, Martin's former car owner.