Denny Hamlin and Michael Jordan are high-profile business partners at 23XI Racing but they also have a deep-seeded competitiveness towards each other on NASCAR Cup Series race days.
For example, Hamlin will continue to race full-time against the cars he owns while at Joe Gibbs Racing through the end of next season, and frequently ‘talks shit’ to Jordan when they are both at the track.
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Those are his words, and it’s a friendly rivalry, but that competitiveness was on full display after the Advent Health 400 at Kansas Speedway on Sunday. Hamlin led the most laps but ultimately got defeated by Tyler Reddick, a 23XI Racing driver, and was left deeply frustrated by the circumstances.
Hamlin was still stewing on pit road when Jordan stopped by to rib his friend and business partner.
“Look, I’m racing against Denny,” Jordan said on the FOX Sports broadcast after the race. “I really wanted to beat him because I know we’re going to talk a lot of trash a little bit later.”
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Hamlin echoed those sentiments on an episode of his Actions Detrimental podcast on Monday.
“I mean, I don’t expect him to understand where I’m at in that moment, right,” Hamlin said. “Every other Reddick win, I’ve been split, happy, sad, happy, sad and it just kind of depends on how my day went.
“This one, I was full a hundred percent in my way on this one, you know what I mean. Like the emotions were all on Team 11 on that one for sure.”
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But Hamlin also expected it because he talked smack to Jordan the night before.
“I told him the same thing I said on this podcast last week, that if something weird doesn’t happen, Kansas is a guaranteed win.”
And what did Jordan say?
“He says, ‘I believe you’ and he said that on Saturday night, hanging out with (Ryan) Blaney, Bubba (Wallace) and Riley (Herbst) watching the O’Reilly race on Saturday night and some NBA Playoffs and we were talking about Reddick.
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“Michael said, ‘you know, yeah, I’m worried about the 11’ and says ‘the 11 is going to win’ so I said ‘I think the 45 was a little bit better than us in practice but we’re good at making overnight adjustments.
“So, I think he’s very happy because of how much shit I talked to him. It’s hard to believe but I talk a lot of trash to him.”
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