NASCAR star Denny Hamlin reveals win at all costs mentality ahead of In-Season tournament

Denny Hamlin has opened up about his excitement for the upcoming NASCAR Cup Series in-season tournament.

The tournament, officially the NASCAR In-Season Challenge, will begin this weekend at Michigan with three qualification and seeding races to set the 32-man bracket.

The in-season tournament is the second chance this year for drivers to win a million dollar prize, after Christopher Bell took home the huge prize at this year's All-Star Race.

The tournament will see drivers pitted against each other in a single elimination format within each of the regular season races, with Hamlin talking about the format on his Actions Detrimental podcast this week.

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The 23XI co-owner admitted: “If we go to a road course, suddenly, I’m telling you. I’m gonna tell Gayle, ‘beat that guy’. I just want to beat that guy.

"Where we think, ‘Oh well, maybe we’ll stay out and get 3 stage points here'. Hell no. I want to do whatever I have to do to beat that guy. So, we’re gonna care.”

The tournament will include three road/street courses, with Mexico City hosting one of the seeding races before the Chicago Street Race hosts the Round of 16 race and Sonoma will watch the last eight duke it out.

Elsewhere on the podcast, Hamlin warned young driver Carson Hocevar that Ricky Stenhouse Jr. will be looking for a chance to wreck him in an upcoming race as retribution for an incident this past weekend.

"You can take this to the book," he said. "Ricky Stenhouse will absolutely wreck Carson Hocevar sometime in the near future. That’s just a fact. I would put this week’s salary on it, I’m not kidding you.

"He ain’t gonna punch him in the face, but he’ll absolutely wreck him, because Ricky’s that kind of guy, he’s gonna feed into what people say, he’ll make sure you know. If you’re Carson, just know that it’s coming."

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