Photo Credit: Noel Lanier
Since Denny Hamlin, driver of the No. 11 Fed Ex Toyota for Joe Gibbs Racing, has won the Daytona 500 at Daytona International Speedway, he has had an up and down season. Excluding Daytona he has three top-10 finishes.
“I’d say trying to find ourselves is kind of the word I keep thinking of, but over the last few weeks we’ve tried a lot of out of the box things,” Hamlin said. “Sometimes it can hurt momentum. At Texas we were very much out of the box and just didn’t run well. Last week at Bristol we were running pretty good until we got the nose ripped off of it coming off pit road so we couldn’t really see what we had there, but other than that – Martinsville we just wrecked being the fastest car on the race track and being dumb. Our momentum has gotten kind of halted is the biggest thing. We had some really good runs at Phoenix and California and those race tracks and then as soon as we get to my wheelhouse tracks I’ve made some mistakes that have cost us a little bit.
“I think we’ve made some not great decisions on experimenting with a few things, but it’s all about learning at this point. We’re here in April and we’ve still got months until the playoffs start so I think it’s an opportunity for us to work on things and try to get better. Ultimately, the checks don’t get written until the end of the year so we need to make sure we’re good when it really, really counts.”
Hamlin still can’t believe that he is a Daytona 500 champion and even at times forgets that he is until he is introduced that way during driver intros and every other introduction he faces.
“Sometimes I forget about it at times until you get introduced that way and I didn’t realize that it’s part of nearly every introduction that you go to,” Hamlin said. “One of the coolest things was going to the awards last night in New York, the Edison awards, and getting introduced as the Daytona 500 Champion. These are some of the brightest minds in America and they’re excited to see a silly race car driver from Virginia. It’s really cool from my standpoint to have that label and ultimately I play a lot of golf with Michael Waltrip who has two of them and he reminds me all the time so I at least need two of them to stop that conversation.”
The Chase for the Sprint Cup cuts off after the Richmond race in the fall. Drivers who are in the top 16 will make it especially those who have race wins. Because of his Daytona 500 win, Hamlin is already locked into the chase. However, he still races hard every weekend but treats the tracks that are raced on as part of the chase differently than tracks that are not raced on during the chase.
“It’s a tough balance because you treat tracks that are in the Chase differently than you would tracks that are not,” Hamlin said. “Texas for instance is in the Chase so we tried something, a direction that we were going to see if that direction was where we need to be when we go back there in the Chase. It was not the right direction, we know that, but the other races, I think you kind of know whether you’re going to have a shot to win or not and you adjust accordingly. “If you don’t, you’re more willing to try some things to learn, but you’re always out there every race to try to win the race for sure. There’s some weekends you have a better opportunity than others.
“We know that our program is very strong on all the race tracks right now so we would definitely like to log some more wins before the race starts because ultimately the further you get into the summer, you want to start building some momentum and get some good things going heading into the Chase. Some of the more successful Chase runs I’ve had, four or five races before the Chase starting to go on a little roll there winning a few races and leading a bunch of laps. That will be a good indicator for us.”
Joe Gibbs Racing as a whole is doing really well this season. Out of the nine races thus far this season one of their members has won a total of five races. Kyle Bush has won at Martinsville Speedway, as well as Texas Motor Speedway and Carl Edwards has won at Bristol Motor Speedway and Richmond International Raceway.
“I think a lot of it has been documented, there are some great drivers that I’m teammates with and I learn a lot from and tracks that I’m pretty good at that they learn from and vice versa,” Hamlin said. “We’re all learning from each other every single week and it’s just raising everyone’s game quite a bit. I think everything is kind of clicking really well, everyone at TRD (Toyota Racing Development) is doing a really good job of providing us the technology that we need to go fast. Every department within JGR is clicking really, really well right now. The addition of the 78 (Martin Truex Jr.) car into our stable has helped and that’s more information – that’s another great crew chief and another great driver that we get to pull information and data from. It’s all just working at this point.”
