Denny Hamlin Pauses Interview to Deliver Somber Post-Race Tribute at Pocono originally appeared on Athlon Sports.
Sunday at Pocono was the 17th race on the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series schedule. Denny Hamlin has scored eight top-five results or in half of them.
It’s undoubtedly been a solid first half of the season for the No. 11 driver, who finished runner-up on Sunday at The Tricky Triangle behind his race-winning Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Chase Briscoe.
The second-place finish is the 44-year-old’s third top three in the last three races, including a third at Nashville and his third win of the season a week later at Michigan. He skipped last weekend’s race at Mexico City to be with his fiancee and two daughters after they welcomed their first son to the family.
A short time after the race on the 2.5-mile track, the three-time Daytona 500 winner spoke with Prime’s Marty Snider and talked about his day but then changed gears and delivered a special tribute to someone who has been a massive part of his career.
“Our strategy, just, man, didn’t work out,” Hamlin said before shifting the tone of the conversation. “But, I do wanna say our condolences are to the FedEx family and the Smith family for the loss of Fred Smith. He was such an integral part of Joe Gibbs Racing’s inception of this 11 car, my career. So thank you to the FedEx family and Fred Smith’s family and we’re thinking of them.”
Following his runner-up result at @PoconoRaceway, @dennyhamlin delivered a somber tribute to FedEx founder Fred Smith during his post-race interview pic.twitter.com/4lKX059GCr
— Kyle Dalton (@kdsportswriter) June 23, 2025
How important was Smith and FedEx to Hamlin?
Hamlin ran a part-time, seven-race schedule during his debut Cup season in 2005 with JGR. FedEx was the main sponsor in each of those first seven races. That partnership continued all the way up until the final race of last season in Phoenix.
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This story was originally reported by Athlon Sports on Jun 23, 2025, where it first appeared.
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