Toyota NSCS Martinsville Denny Hamlin Notes & Quotes

TOYOTA NASCAR Sprint Cup Series (NSCS)
Denny Hamlin — Notes & Quotes
Martinsville Speedway – October 25, 2013

DENNY HAMLIN, No. 11 FedEx One Rate Toyota Camry, Joe Gibbs Racing
Are you excited to return to Martinsville?
“We definitely are excited about the last four races and especially the race tracks ahead of us, but especially this one in particular.  Obviously, not being able to run the spring race here hurts.  Richmond is home, but this is a home-type track for me.  It hurt to watch this race in the spring, but now it feels good to come back here and run some laps and feel as comfortable as ever.  Our team has put a large emphasis on this race in particular.  We’ve won a race every year that I’ve been in this series and obviously this will be our best shot to get that done.”

Are you looking forward to the season being over?
“It’s tough because what my fans see is they see the struggles, they see the blown engines and things like that we’ve had here recently, but those are all things that we signed up for when we didn’t make the Chase.  We decided it would be best for us to work on next year and focus on next year.  Everything we’ve done since not making the Chase has been focused on running well next year whether it be testing in 2014 form — I know Drew Herring did that for us at Texas this past week.  We did some short track testing for our teammates at this race track.  Not here, but another short track.  Really, we’ve not thrown away this year, but we have really shifted our focus to coming up with an engine that works good for next year, a chassis setup that’s going to work good and along with it, we’d like to get a little momentum with it.  Obviously, we had a small victory in a top-10 at Charlotte.  We ran top-10 the previous two or three races before that before blown engines or what have you — running out of gas and some other challenges that we’ve had.  Super tough on us and it will make you stronger in the end and obviously, if we could get a win this weekend by no means will it fix or make us feel good about our year, but it will definitely give us something to smile about in the off-season.”

How do you think Matt Kenseth will do this weekend?
“I think that he (Matt Kenseth) did a really good job in the spring with just the absorbing I got to do with him.  Obviously, Jimmie (Johnson) I felt like was in his own zip code in the spring.  I promised him when I went to victory lane to congratulate him that it wouldn’t be that easy this time around.  I think Matt has learned a lot.  Really, coming here he had a big challenge — one of the biggest challenges was coming here in the spring for Matt was driving a car that drove completely different than he had ever driven before.  Now he knows what to expect and obviously we came up with a setup for our teammates to run this weekend that looks like all three of them have some decent speed.  I think he’s going to be fine.  I think that tomorrow will be a big day for them to tune it in, but Matt is plenty capable.  He led some laps here in the spring and I think our cars will be better this time around.”

Have you spoken with other friends who are athletes about playing hurt?
“You lean on the people that have been in the situation before.  For us, we rely so much on the feel that comes from our bottom.  Basically, that’s how we find the edge in these cars and trucks is knowing where that edge is and obviously when you have back pains and other injuries, it takes away from your feel.  It numbs things when you have to do treatments that really just take pain away, it’s also taking away from feel that you have in your car.  That’s been a challenge and obviously, we hope that next year won’t be that way.  We’re just fighting through it.  I still feel like we turned a corner and have started to run better here in the last month or so.  Even with that, everyone goes through injuries differently.  Some people don’t play, some people do, but I know when I had an ACL injury in 2010 that just made my focus on what my job was even sharper because I felt like I didn’t want to be the reason that was holding our race team back.  I feel the same way with the injury we’re dealing with now.  I’m focused to make sure I’m doing everything sound like I should be.”

Is there any added pressure to have the Jordan brand on the race truck?
“One of the stipulations that Michael (Jordan) had was I had to guarantee a win.  He didn’t say what day though so that was the hook on him.  He’s an ultra competitive guy who loves racing.  He’s been supportive of us these last few years and even this year keeping us motivated and keeping your eye on the prize.  He’s always good about that.  For us it’s a great connection we have and obviously to have his logo and his brand on our truck is pretty awesome.  They’ve never been a part of racing in that capacity before so hopefully we do well for them.  We changed everything we could on the truck to get it the fastest there in final practice.  Excited about the weekend.”

Have you made any decision about surgery in the off-season?
“As far as surgery, I still haven’t decided on it.  I still haven’t met with the doctors to figure out the best option.  I have been feeling so much better this last month or so that I’d like to steer away from surgery if possible.  Obviously, I don’t want to just cover up the pain with the treatments that I’ve been doing.  That just numbs you a little bit.  We still have an issue there that we have to address in the next month or so.”

Do you feel forgotten as competition each weekend?
“I think that we need to perform on the race track and they’ll notice us tomorrow and they’ll notice us Sunday, but I don’t feel any type of entitlement to being a favorite.  Especially how we’ve run these last six months or so has been very tough. We’ve definitely been sort of a non-factor I guess you could say as far as race wins are concerned.  I think for the competition or anyone from the outside to think that the 11 is going to be the favorite going into a track where we struggled to run top-10 lately would be farfetched.  However, I’m pretty sure and pretty confident that we’re going to be a pretty large force on Sunday.”

How is your back feeling and will it be able to hold up competing in both races this weekend?
“We’re at a short track so the hits here usually are minimal because your speed is minimal here, but I feel fine.  Really, like I said, the last couple months or so I’ve gotten out of the car and my back has felt as good as it did when I started.  I think that the Truck race here is relatively short, just 200 laps, goes by pretty quick here so I think we’ll be fine and hopefully there’s some things that I can learn from Saturday that can translate to some success on Sunday.  Even today during practice there’s some things that I correlated between the two that got both programs running better.  I think we’ll be fine as far as that aspect of it.  Thank goodness FedEx has introduced this One Rate shipping because obviously Grandfather Clocks can be expensive to ship.  I don’t know if they have a box big enough though with that One Rate to ship that clock or not, but we’ll come up with something.”

How are Jimmie Johnson and Matt Kenseth able to maintain their friendship as they compete for the Cup title?
“Well, I think that there’s just a huge mutual respect between the guys if I had to guess.  I don’t know the extent of their texting relationship, how intimate they really get or anything like that, but I’m sure through the texts that I’ve shared with both of them I’m guessing it’s light-hearted and Matt (Kenseth) was probably joking around saying, ‘Don’t beat up on me too bad.’  And, Jimmie (Johnson) is probably like, ‘Oh yeah, you led laps here in the spring so you’ll be fine.’  I’m guessing it’s more just joking around.  Light-hearted head games more than it is anything.”

Does Matt Kenseth have an underrated sense of humor?
“Um, no it’s overrated.”

What is your reaction to NASCAR talking to the drivers about qualifying changes?
“I didn’t get to go to that meeting.  Obviously I went to the couple of charity events, but I do know what they talked about. Definitely you want to see some exciting qualifying, opening up a superspeedway for an hour and telling us to go out there and run the fastest lap that you can would be very interesting and very fun in my mind.  So, I’m glad they’re open to those changes, I think that will be great for our sport.  Obviously, we all know that superspeedway qualifying doesn’t make for the best TV at times, but still making that change would be a good thing.”

What do you like or expect for 2014 after testing recently at Charlotte?
“The 2014 (test) — one thing for sure, I think that they’re going to go forward with is the no ride-height rule.  I think that that is a very positive thing.  I drove the car at Charlotte and I thought that that was a very positive change.  They’re looking at some different aero packages whether it be a big spoiler or a small spoiler.  We went through a lot of different packages.  I don’t know that we really found something that was better than what we had, but they are at least trying to find something to make passing a little bit easier.  Trying to make it to where that third and fourth car in line doesn’t have such a huge aero disadvantage.  I’m not sure we really found that package yet that we need to make that happen, but it looks like they’re going to run another test in December.  So, that’s good that’s their main focus because I think really that should be their main focus going forward is getting our product better, making the racing excitement better and with the right tire, engine and aero package you can really come up with something good.  But, it’s going to take all three of those things working together.  I don’t think that you will be able to just take all of the downforce away and run them on the same hard tires that we’ve been.  We’ve got to soften the tires with it, but that’s all stuff that they’ve looked through and they’re going to figure something out.”

Did you like the tapered spacer?
“I didn’t like the tapered spacer personally.  In my opinion, the only way to create passing is to create off-throttle time.  It’s all about whose got the guts to drive into the corner harder than the next guy.  If we’re all running around wide open all of the time everyone is going to run pretty much the same speed.  You’ve got to create time off the throttle and make us start using brakes again.  No one hardly uses brakes anymore in our sport and that’s just another element of the driver difference that has been taken away these last few years.”

How did your time out of the race car with your back injury help you when you got back in the car?
“One thing I can tell you is that it makes you appreciate the job you have.  Obviously, the next time we get to victory lane it will make me appreciate that moment that much more because it’s been such a struggle.  Not only just the back stuff, but I mean we came back and we were pretty good and had two top-fives in a row.  But, since then when you lose that edge of being at the top of your sport it’s making you fight that much harder to get back to the top and so for us I think that the moment in which we become our old race team that we’ve been for the last seven and a half years and we start winning races again it’s just going to make me appreciate it that much more because not only having to sit out, but also having a half a year of struggling to be competitive.  It will be overwhelming, I guess you could say, once we win.”

How would you describe 2013?
“Disappointing, but for a lot of different reasons.  We actually started the year and we were competing for race wins before we had the crash at Fontana.  Obviously we were in a position to win that race, Bristol we were pretty good until we had a blown tire.  But, disappointing because not only did that take all of our momentum away, but then we were fighting something all of the time.  I came back and we still had a fighting chance, but then three or four blown tires in a row kind of takes you out of the Chase picture and then next thing you know you go into ‘R&D’ (research and development) mode and then you really struggle.  So, it’s been a very trying year.  I guess that would probably be the key word to our year, but you’ve just got to suck it up and realize that we had seven great years and there’s a lot of great drivers that have missed the Chase once or twice and a lot of great drivers that have gone winless throughout a season.  It doesn’t make them any less of a driver or hurt their legacy at all because we all know how good they are and we’ve just got to battle through it.  This has just been one of those years that’s going to make you tougher and stronger in the long run.