Denny Hamlin thinks NASCAR was 30 minutes away from calling off Grant Park 220 in Chicago

Denny Hamlin believes Mother Nature would’ve ruined NASCAR’s Chicago Street Race if she had another half hour to perform.

While rain made an undeniable mark on the inaugural event anyways, the Joe Gibbs Racing wheelman believes NASCAR was up against it as it pertained to potentially canceling the race. During this week’s Actions Detrimental podcast, Hamlin elaborated on why he believes NASCAR beat the buzzer.

“So it stopped probably around 4:50, 4:55, and I look and I’m about to do my interview, and they’re saying, ‘Drivers to their cars at 5:15,’ and I’m like, ‘These guys. Here they go again. I mean, they’re just relentless in their optimism.’ I don’t know if it’s optimism or if it’s just trying to get the people to stay on the TV a little bit longer before they call it. Everyone in the driver’s lounge had heard that they were going to call it, which I think had this gone 30 more minutes, no question,” stated Hamlin. “I mean, you would’ve had — I think it was no question, but who knows who’s the actual decision maker on it.

“Obviously we didn’t have enough time to get in the whole race as it was. They’ve stated in the past, ‘We will never start a race that we don’t think we can get the entirety in.’ Given the time we started, had it gone green, yes. We would’ve got the whole thing in. Is it realistic? Absolutely not. But we got in three-quarters of it.”

Alas, getting three-quarters of the race in can be considered a win, as the event was a rousing success from multiple standpoints. Continuing, Hamlin explained how he was shocked at how great the drainage was on the track, as he truly believed the race was not going to be run.

“So I walk out there at 5:10 to go get in the car, and I looked at the racetrack thinking — you know, we were inside doing an interview. Come out, I have to be at my car in five minutes to go racing. And I look at the streets and I’m like, ‘Damn, it’s — it was just wet,’ it was all gone,” said Hamlin. “The drainage was unbelievable.

“But what was crazy is, when it was raining, the drainage seemed bad. Like I guess it was just so overwhelmed with all the city water going into one place, and it was just filling up.”

Thankfully the Chicago sewer system came through for NASCAR, and we got one of the more memorable events in recent memory, even with a ton of rain dampening the weekend.