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There has to be a nickname in here somewhere......

Sim racing helps Hamlin get road win

I run Dale Jr's DMP Online Racing League, and I am a friend of Jr., Martin Truex Jr. and Denny Hamlin. It was awesome to see Denny Hamlin win that road course race last weekend. Let me tell you something funny about all of that.

As you know, Denny is a big NASCAR simulation racer. Well, with the sim we use, you can set ratings on the race servers to keep out the rookies. You can set the ratings to different types of race tracks — road courses to speedways to short tracks. This all took place early in 2004, and Denny was just starting to race with the DMP gang then. He would whoop our rears all the time on the short tracks and the speedways, and he had a high rating for those types of tracks.

The ratings can be set from 0-10, and Denny had a 0 in the road courses. We had the race server set to 2 on the roadies so Denny couldn't get in to race on them. We would use a voice chat program to talk to each other when we raced. Well, after Denny would hand our rears to us on the ovals, then we would tell him we were going to race a road course, and he would get so mad cause he couldn't get in.

Well, after a few weeks, we decided to lower the ratings to 0 so he could race with us. Oh man, he was so bad it was funny. We would tease him all the time 'cause he was all over the place and wrecking all the time. It makes me laugh hard remembering all of this.

But after awhile, he got to be real good at them, and he was so determined to win a few races against us. He finally got to where he could win or finish in the top 3 to 5. You have to understand we are some of the best sim racers in the world, and Denny has to be probably one of the top 3 to 5 sim racers in the world also.

So to see what he did in Mexico was so awesome, and I think we had something to do with it.

Dan DeNayer is the president of the DMP Online Racing League. For more information, go to DMP-Racing.com .