Joe Gibbs Racing star Denny Hamlin believes he wouldn't be the NASCAR driver he is today had he not been teammates with Kyle Busch for so long.

Hamlin took his first Cup Series victory since Busch's sudden passing last month at Nashville Superspeedway on Sunday, the 62nd of his career.

The driver of the No. 11 Toyota is now just one win short of Busch's Cup Series win total of 63, and if he continues on his current trajectory, he will soon match and eventually surpass it.

When that was put to him in Sunday's post-race press conference, Hamlin said that he was resigned to never surpassing Busch on the list, and was quick to point out that it was Busch who raised his game to where he is today, having been teammates at JGR from 2008 through 2022.

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Denny Hamlin: Kyle Busch raised my game

"I thought about it and certainly aspired to eventually get there," Hamlin told the media in Tennessee.

"I knew my career was going to end before his career was going to end, and we didn’t know what was going to happen, but I had kind of resigned to the fact that I thought we weren’t going to overtake Kyle, and we still might not. We don’t know if this is the last one. We don’t know.

"Yeah, it just shows how good he was for so long. I saw the stats online where we ran together 500-and-some races, and he finished ahead of me ten more times than I beat him in the same equipment.

"He certainly taught me a lot. He was by far — it was interesting too, I mean, you see so many tributes and people have stories that you just didn’t know. Then I didn’t realize just a few months ago he had a Q&A, and he asked who has he learned the most from teammate-wise, and he said me, and I was like that made me feel good. I didn’t realize that he had said that

"Yeah, it was an honor to be his teammate for 15 years. He raised my game. Without him as a teammate, there’s no way I win the races I win, especially the ones like today."

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