Denny Hamlin's playoff advantage? "I feel like I'm mentally tougher"

But at this time of the season, it’s what Hamlin hasn’t done that he is asked most about.

As the 10-race NASCAR playoffs begin this weekend at Chicagoland Speedway, Hamlin has yet to take the ultimate prize – the series championship.

With all of his accomplishments, does the lack of a title mean the 36-year-old Virginia native still has something to prove?

Yes and no.

“I mean, you always race with a little bit of a chip on your shoulders. But obviously, we’ve been close in years past. We’ve won races. That’s been no shocker. But, yeah, it’s been the championship that’s been the hardest to come by, as it should be,” Hamlin said this week at the NASCAR Hall of Fame.

“Sometimes circumstances took us out. Sometimes it was performance. Most of the time it was circumstances.”

Hamlin has actually been one of the most consistent performers throughout his Cup series career. He has never finished lower than 12^th in the series standings when he has run full-time and competed in all 36 races.

He came closest to a championship in 2010, when he and his No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota team won eight races and lost the title by 39 points to Jimmie Johnson with a subpar performance in the series finale at Homestead, Fla.

Hamlin admits he thought he would have won a championship by now in his career, but he’s just as thankful he’s had the opportunity to compete for one virtually every season.

“Under a few formats, we’d have two (championships) by now. But you race the format that you’ve got in front of you,” he said. “I'm confident that under any format we're good enough to win, at any race track we're good enough to win.

“That's something I'd say probably less than have of those playoff drivers can say honestly. They hope to be consistent or they hope they 10^th-place their way through this thing. We feel like we can go through this and win any given week, and that’s a huge advantage.”

Hamlin has won two races this season and enters the playoffs as the seventh seed among 16 drivers. Only five times this season has he finished lower than 20^th in a race – another run of remarkable consistency.

The tracks which make up the final 10-race stretch are good ones for Hamlin, another reason why he remains upbeat about his title chances this season even though he may not have won as much as some others or accumulated as many playoff points.

His experience may be his biggest asset this season – one he plans to use as much as possible to his advantage.

“I think that's probably one of the biggest advantages that I have over other drivers, is I feel like I'm mentally tougher. I feel like I've gone through everything there is to go through in these playoffs,” he said. “I’ve gone through it all.

“There’s nothing that will surprise me, nothing that will shock me. But, you know, I think that experience helps you when you have adversity (and) battle back from it. I think Darlington was a prime example of that. I thought I’d thrown away the race, then I found a way to get it back.”