DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- There's a rhythm to a NASCAR Victory Lane celebration. Every hat has been carefully stacked in advance. Every photo taken with every sponsor representative is preplanned. Even the spraying of champagne is done so according to the schedule. Not even the sport's biggest event, the Daytona 500, is above being beholden to the minute-by-minute spreadsheet.
But when Denny Hamlin, freshly soaked in Gatorade and freshly papered with falling confetti, spotted the woman in the blue blouse, he immediately broke rank. The newest two-time Daytona 500 champion bolted away from the stage and stepped off of the official celebration timeline.
"Melissa!"
He grabbed the woman in blue and they embraced. Then they cried. Then they smiled. The smile, that was the greatest accomplishment. Greater even than the win that caused it.
"Can you believe that just happened?" Hamlin said to Melissa Gibbs.
"Yes," she replied, nodding. "Yes, I can."
Melissa Gibbs became a widow five weeks ago. Her husband, J.D. Gibbs, was the perpetually jovial and universally loved president of Joe Gibbs Racing, the son of a Pro Football Hall of Famer who had every excuse in the world to carry the attitude of privilege, but never came close. His death at the age of 49 was unusually cruel, the end of a long, slow mental deterioration. The last time Hamlin and Melissa Gibbs had embraced in Daytona's Victory Lane was three years earlier, almost to the night, and J.D. was there, but he also wasn't. Back then, his days were hit or miss. Thankfully, Feb. 21, 2016, was one of the good ones. But it is also the last day that most of his friends in the NASCAR garage remember seeing him. To the public, he just faded away. In private, Melissa lived on the front lines, caring for the boy she'd met in the seventh grade as he became a shadow of himself.
It is all so crushingly sad. Sad to think about. Sad to watch. Sad to live through. Sunday night at Daytona, finally, it wasn't sad.
"Man, we have been through so much during this offseason, and it's all been just so hard, but look at this," Hamlin said, standing alongside the FedEx Toyota Camry that has always carried J.D. Gibbs' old football and racing number, No. 11. For this race, his name was over the door, per Hamlin's insistence. On the 11th lap of the race, the team stood on the pit wall for the entire lap to pay tribute. "Here's my family, J.D.'s family, our team, which is like a family, and everyone is smiling," Hamlin said. "Everyone is happy. I can't even explain how much that means to me right now."
The story has been told so many times, how J.D. Gibbs traveled to Richmond to pick up some late-model race cars, and by accident discovered a local kid who was crazy fast. He convinced his father to hire the kid, and in a ridiculously short period of time he rocketed up the ladder and into J.D.'s beloved No. 11. "Denny will always be my greatest 'I told you so,'" J.D. joked in 2010, when Hamlin nearly won the NASCAR Cup Series championship. "Sure, Dad has all his Super Rings and all of that, but I can always walk into his office and say, 'Man, that guy I called you about that time, he is so good at driving race cars, isn't he?!"
Throughout Daytona Speedweeks, the elder Gibbs opened up about the loss of his son. He recalled then-fledgling Joe Gibbs Racing's breakthrough moment, when Dale Jarrett shocked the racing world by outdueling Dale Earnhardt to win the 1993 Daytona 500. On the final pit stop of the race, one of the tire changers failed to secure all five lugnuts on one of the tires. Somehow, that wheel stayed put with only three bolts holding it in place. That tire changer was 23-year old J.D. Gibbs.
"We've been coming down here 27 years," J.D.'s father recalled on the eve of this year's Great American Race. "And every single time I go down to pit road I can't help but laugh thinking about my son going over that wall, and nearly losing us the Daytona 500. I like going down there and thinking about that. Being at Daytona, with all these memories together, I think it makes us all feel closer to him."
Hamlin's victory was earned by surviving a series of massive multi-car crashes, resulting red flags, and a frantic finish "that I only survived because I had a teammate (Kyle Busch) back there giving me two bumpers to block with instead of one," Hamlin said. His 32nd Cup Series victory moved him into the top 25 on NASCAR's career wins list, alongside, fittingly, Jarrett.
"There are so many things I could sit here and go through like him tying Dale Jarrett," Gibbs said, standing among his family after the race. "So many things that tell me that something else was at work tonight. That's why this is the most emotional win of my career, no matter the sport. This was destined to be J.D.'s night."
As Hamlin returned to the celebration, Melissa Gibbs quietly returned to a hidden-in-plain-sight spot, stage right of the crowded Victory Lane festivities. As the racers -- all hired by her husband -- restarted the hoopla, she quietly observed from a safe distance. She did all those familiar things that anyone who has suffered loss will do. She dabbed her darkened eyes. She mustered a brave face every time someone grabbed her up into a hug or offered the advice and well-wishes that everyone always nervously offers to a widow. She cried and she laughed all at once. Just one month ago, Melissa Gibbs had taken to the stage at her husband's memorial service and stunned everyone watching -- hundreds in attendance and thousands on the internet -- with her grace in the face of grief.
On Sunday night, with no one watching, she was even more impressive, making the transition from weeping to smiling all the while guarded by her four sons, like a football flying wedge. The older boys, Jackson and Miller, set up a polite screening process, keeping an eye on those who closed in on their mother. If anyone outstayed their conversational welcome, the boys would politely keep them moving along. Eventually, once they knew Mom was OK, they climbed onto the stage to take photos with their grandfather and his third Daytona 500 champion's trophy.
"Look here," Miller said, pointing to the name embroidered over the left breast pocket of his shirt. At first glance, the shirt looked like every other piece of official Joe Gibbs Racing team garb being worn in Victory Lane. But upon closer inspection, the white was worn, a little yellowed. The sponsor emblem -- Interstate Batteries -- didn't match all of the FedEx logos around it. And the name, in red script, was not the name of the young man wearing it: "J.D. Gibbs."
"This is the crew shirt that my dad wore for the Daytona 500 in 1993," the 18-year old explained giddily. "This is the very one that he wore over the wall. That he wore right here in Victory Lane at the Daytona 500. Can you believe that?"
On this night, yes. Yes, we can.