DAYTONA, Fla. (WGHP) — If you watched NASCAR: Full Speed on Netflix, driver Denny Hamlin says you got a pretty accurate view of his life in the fast lane.

FOX8’s Kevin Connolly and Danny Harnden and WFLA’s JB Biunno spent Wednesday afternoon catching up with drivers as they get ready to hit the speedway this Sunday for the Daytona 500.

Hamlin, of Chesterfield, Virginia, drives the No. 11 Toyota for Joe Gibbs Racing. He has 18 full seasons in the NASCAR Cup Series behind him and came in 5th in the 2023 NASCAR Cup Series for the second consecutive year.

Most recently, however, Hamlin was among several drivers cast under Netflix’s spotlight for the new docuseries “Full Speed,” which was released in January with five 45-minute episodes. The series follows the 2023 NASCAR Cup Series playoffs up through the championship race, including slices of life both on and off the track.

“I think that how I was portrayed was accurate,” Hamlin said. “How I see the other drivers that were on there portrayed was how I see them, so I thought that that was very fair in that instance.”

Hamlin said he tried to give camera crews as much access to his life as he could to help ensure that the docuseries depicted him faithfully, saying he never felt uncomfortable or like he had to “fake it.”

“If I only give them 10% of my life, that snippet might not be who I really am, right?” Hamlin said. “So if I give them all of it, then now I’m crossing my fingers that they’re going to produce it correctly. Luckily for me, they did, and I thought it was an overall positive for me.”

While the series may not always present the drivers in the most flattering light, it offers a look at the reality the driver’s face when you’re not watching the race.

“You see the highs and lows of it,” Hamlin said. “You see me trash-talking the fans in one minute. You see the ultimate defeat when we get knocked out after Martinsville and me with my family.

“All those things happen in real life. You just don’t necessarily see it. You see the persona that’s out there that’s like, ‘Screw you guys. I’m the man,’ whatever, but then there is a guy that still has kids, and I have to turn the switch off and be a family guy, and then you see the aspect of my parents and what they mean to me as well. So, it’s all out there, but now people see it a little more.”

As Hamlin preps for the new season, he says you may see him being more of a “selfish driver,” some of which he says “was portrayed during the Netflix documentary,”

“I’m going to have to go back to my old ways,” Hamlin said. “I know it’s a shock to many, but I’m going to have to be more selfish. … I think that what gave me the results from the previous Daytona 500s was being selfish at times.”

To do that, he says he will be “waving bye-bye to the strategy of ‘Well if I’m behind this person, I have to push them.’ Well, I don’t agree with the move that they might make, so why do I have to go with them? That’s not in my best interests.”

Hamlin now heads into his 18th Daytona 500 gunning to win the race for the fourth time after previously winning in 2016, 2019 and 2020,

DraftKings puts his odds of winning the 2024 championship at 8-1.