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Denny Hamlin trolls Michigan NASCAR crowd with Ohio State celebration after burnout

Brian Jones Profile Picby: Brian Jones06/08/25brianjones_93
Denny Hamlin (40)
Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images

Denny Hamlin trolled the NASCAR fans at Michigan International Speedway by doing the Ohio State celebration. After winning the FireKeepers Casino 400 and doing his burnout, Hamlin was seen doing the O-H-I-O chant.

Denny Hamlin did the chant to poke fun at Michigan fans, but he became a bandwagon Ohio State fan during the team’s run to a football national championship last season. Earlier this year, Hamlin talked about being a Buckeyes fan during the College Football Playoff.

“You know what makes things go really fast is riding the five-week bandwagon all the way to the natties,” Hamlin said while showing off his Ohio State national champions shirt on the Actions Detrimental podcast in February. Hamlin also talked about getting the national title shirt while Ohio State was still playing in the title game against Notre Dame.

Denny Hamlin became a bandwagon Ohio State fan

“There may or may not be videos of us trying to take our shirts off in the third quarter,” Hamlin revealed. “Travis [Rockhold] is saying, ‘No, no. You put it back on. You put it back on. We had it underneath, so we’re peeling our layers off because it was like, ‘Oh, this is game.’ And then Notre Dame goes on to score like 14 straight. It was like ‘Uh, okay. We’re still fine. Everything’s fine.’”

Denny Hamlin also talked about the experience of going to an Ohio State football game. “I’ll be honest with you when you jump on the bandwagon with the best team, it surely makes it easy and fun,” he said. “Just to me, the atmosphere was the biggest thing I noticed being so different.

“If I go to an NFL game, it’s a [Carolina] Panthers game and I’m not a Panthers fan by any means, Charlotte fans are suspect at best when it comes to their fandom. It’s like going to a library compared to going to when I went to The Shoe, and it is unbelievable. The crowd was so freaking loud at every play.”

Hamlin is trying to be like Ohio State and win a championship at the end of the year. The 44-year-old has yet to win a title despite winning 57 Cup Series races in 701 starts.