Following only a pair of top-fives to start the season, Denny Hamlin feels that Joe Gibbs Racing’s program could be improved to match the likes of Stewart-Haas Racing, Hendrick Motorsports and Penske Racing. He also feels last week “showed signs of progress” as he ran inside the top-10 all day, before a pit road penalty for an “uncontrolled tire” took him out of contention, resulting in a 28th place finish.
“You still have to finish and execute the way you’re supposed to at the end of these races to win them, but I thought overall on the mile-and-a-half program that’s been our strong suit,” he commented. “Really for the last year and a half, if we’ve had any strong suit at all, it’s been on the bigger tracks. It’s these tracks that you become a little more concerned with and are anxious for us to see this weekend kind of where our program stands on the short tracks. We feel like we have some great short track drivers in our stable that haven’t got to showcase that over the last two years because our program has been so bad. I think that hopefully that turns around this weekend.”
Though while he is getting an understanding of where his program is, Hamlin adds that you probably won’t know where each driver stands in relation to each other until “mid-summer” as that’s when teams fully understand their programs and start to go back to some of the tracks again.
“I think everyone right now is chasing really the 4 (Kevin Harvick) car and some other Hendrick guys,” he added. “Still plenty of time to catch those guys here in the future.”
As a four-time winner at Martinsville Speedway, a lot of eyes are looking in Hamlin’s direction for success this coming weekend. However, in the past four years, Hamlin has only posted one top-five finish, a fifth place finish in 2011.
“It hasn’t been at these (short tracks),” he commented. “We did run pretty strong here though in the Chase race last time we were here. For me, our struggles come more at like Richmond, Loudon and Phoenix where our program has just taken a turn to the bad over the last couple years. This is kind of a one-off race track that the driver can make up a little bit of a difference and that’s why you see the same drivers up front here really no matter what’s going on in their program, they’re up front here. I think that this is kind of a one-off track as far as that’s concerned.”
Hamlin added that he feels this is a good opportunity to see where Joe Gibbs Racing sizes up against their competition, and feels that he will be part of the drivers in contention to win on Sunday. He says that “it’s just a matter of if we can get our cars to do the things we need them to do.”
A victory for Hamlin this weekend would be huge as it would lock him into the Chase. It’d also be huge for Toyota, as they’d break Chevrolet’s stranglehold on the paperclip. Chevrolet has won the past eight races at Martinsville Speedway with seven different drivers.
“It would be (huge) and obviously it’s been said 1000 times about when the last Toyota win has been,” Hamlin said. “It’s been tough and it’s been a hard year for the organization and the manufacturer. Not that a win here would just satisfy all those needs – we still know that realistically we’ve got a lot of work to do, but it definitely would take a lot of pressure off because right now we’re all in that hornets’ nest of the bubble spot if this thing comes down to points.”
