DENNY HAMLIN, No. 11 FedEx Office Toyota Camry, Joe Gibbs Racing What do you think of your performance of late? “It feels good being more competitive here the last six, seven weeks or so. Obviously, last week we didn’t finish it off like we felt like we could have or should have, but still things are positive in the sense that we are running better and contending for victories over these last five of six weeks of so. That part of it is encouraging. Obviously, we enjoy coming here to Michigan because it’s such a raceable race track and so that part it’s always fun coming here because of that.”
Did FedEx deliver the wrong oil pans? “No. Nope.” Do you feel snake bit at all this year due to weird issues? “It’s frustrating. It’s definitely frustrating from my standpoint because we try to do everything inside the car to make sure I have a car capable of winning at the end of the day. But it’s a team sport and, you know, to win these races everyone has to do a perfect job, a near perfect job and when there’s one hiccup it can just ruin your day. And obviously one bad thing leads to another. Last weekend — it’s just one thing snow balled into another and we find ourselves racing with no brakes the last 50 laps. It’s frustrating because I know we’re capable of winning and even though we haven’t won this year there’s been quite a few races where I felt like we could or should have. But the sport’s not about that. It’s about what you got in the win column and how you’re performing and the way I see it we’re 12th in points so we still got some work to do.”
Are you encouraged you have run well as of late or discouraged you haven’t won? “It’s fifty, fifty really from my standpoint. We haven’t won. At the beginning of the year we didn’t win because we weren’t capable of winning — ours cars, I didn’t feel like we’re fast enough and we still also had bad luck on top of it. Now we’re just kind of getting into. We need to figure out how to finish these races like we should. So it’s fifty, fifty. Right now, I’m really encouraged at the fact our cars do have speed now. You’ll win races as long as we keep putting ourselves up front like we have been the last few.”
What do you know about the Joe Gibbs Racing oil pans and do you expect retribution? “I don’t think so, as far as the last part of it. For me, I don’t know a whole lot about it to be honest with you. We continue to evolve our cars and things like that through the course of a season. It’s just, all teams do. And usually when you have something new — a new part
