For any driver, a win in their hometown can be the sweetest victory of their career. Hamlin has experienced that in the past – twice – at Richmond International Raceway. Now the Virginia native hopes to repeat that success on Saturday night.
The only thing that stands in his way, though is his 42 fellow competitors and the lack of success by Joe Gibbs Racing recently on the short tracks. Hamlin finished sixth at Bristol, followed by a 19th place finish at Martinsville Speedway, a track where he normally is battling for the lead all day.
“We’ve spent some time doing some short track testing during the off weekend to try to get better,” Hamlin noted. “I feel like over these last couple years — really since these Generation 6 cars, we as an organization have struggled. We’ve really lost our edge, I guess you could say on these short tracks.”
In his last three races at Richmond, Hamlin has failed to finish in the top 10 and repeat the success of years past.
“We’re trying to get some of that good feel in the car back,” Hamlin continued. “I think we took some steps forward today in practice. Still not where we need to be by any means, but definitely should perform better than we did at Martinsville.”
Beyond the short tracks, Hamlin’s season hasn’t been up to expectations with only two top-10s in the first seven races this season.
“Our cars are a little bit off right now,” Hamlin commented.”There’s a lot of little pieces and parts of our car that is a little off just a little bit, which really gets magnified — especially when a couple teams have hit on something that really has given them an advantage at this point because they’ve found a setup that is really working well. We’re kind of getting split by that at this time, but like I said — we’re getting better.”
Hamlin feels that each time his team gets on the track they’re learning and they still have all of their tests available for the second half of the season if need be.
“Obviously we can save all the tests we want for the Chase, but if you’re not in it, it really doesn’t matter,” Hamlin commented. “We’ve got to get our cars running a little bit better than what they are right now.”
Certainly improvement has been despite the lack of results on paper as Hamlin has been improving with each passing week. Based on the improvement and the success of their test, Hamlin feels that this is a good time for them to come to Richmond.
“We went from a very subpar car the first practice to, in just one hour later, we feel like is somewhere around a top-five car,” Hamlin commented. “We’re making gains and heading in the right direction. Just as a driver, I’m so impatient — you want things. I feel like I want to take advantage of things that are at these race tracks because these are the race tracks that we perform so well at in the past, but you want to have the best of the best.”
Being able to pull off a win in front of the hometown crowd would be huge, however it’d be even bigger for other reasons. A win would help begin to solidify Hamlin’s Chase chances. Hamlin also feels it’s important due to the fact that he missed the race at Auto Club Speedway as a result of a piece of dirt in his eye, and the fact that he’s lost points at other races this year where he shouldn’t have.
“It’s a fine balance that I wish we could have a win,” Hamlin said. “We’re so far off with our cars right now, I wish we could try some dramatically different setups and things, but we still have to keep the points thing in mind if for some reason we don’t get a win — we need to be one of those guys that are high enough in points to get a berth that way.
“It really plays into the advantage of those drivers that do have wins to really start to work on different areas for these next few months before the Chase to improve their cars. It’s a tough spot for us, because like I said, we would like to get that win, but we also have to make sure we put a setup in the car that is going to get us a good run as well.”
While winning is important, Hamlin says that pressure to get that win and lock your way into the Chase hasn’t set in yet. The driver of the No. 11 FedEx Camry says that’ll probably start to set in late June and you’ll start to see teams mix it up and perhaps try to pull that ‘Hail Mary’ move to win a race.
“At this point, where we’re at with our organization, I think we’re in a very slow process to get our cars better and we still have great race cars and great pit crew and the things that kind of keep us at least in contention every single week is how solid the organization is,” he added. “We definitely know that we are a little bit behind and it’s going to take a little time. We’re going to try to be patient with that. The changes and our speed is not going to change overnight, but it will change in the next month or two. I’m looking forward to that.”
