Joe Gibbs Racing driver Denny Hamlin was made available to the media at Daytona International Speedway:
DENNY HAMLIN, No. 11 FedEx Toyota Camry, Joe Gibbs Racing
Have you come down from the high of the Daytona 500 win?
“It’s definitely been a good year no matter what when you win a race like that, but it’s cool to come back here and obviously you go – had to do some Coke ride-alongs yesterday and you’re back in victory lane where you were and definitely brings back some good memories for sure. Really this track has been very good to me throughout my career. We hope to complete the sweep this weekend.”
Did you let Tony win at Sonoma?
“I didn’t let Tony (Stewart) win. I made a mistake and didn’t execute good. Ultimately I made a mistake and thought we would maybe drag race to the line because we were in the center of the corner side-by-side and I thought this could be good. Once I saw him steer left, I knew it was over with. He had an opportunity to – if I’m in his situation, I probably would do the same. My biggest mistake I feel like is not recognizing the gap I had behind me. I don’t know whether Tony would have gotten there. I thought it would have been very close if you really wanted to carry the car down in there, whether he still would have got to me or not. I still needed to execute to make him make the decision. Instead I made the decision for him.”
Will you use similar strategy and team work for this Daytona race that helped win you the Daytona 500?
“Anytime we can work together, I try for sure. I don’t know that it was a plot to take out one car by any means. I thought we showed a lot of speed with just our cars in practice looking at lap times with what we would run as a group of five. Simple math says what the pack was going to run and I knew that if we could stay in a line and commit to each other, it would be tough for others to pass us. It worked out well. Legitimately there were five Toyotas out to win on the final lap and that’s really all we could have asked for. It was something that was in the works for a long time and it was executed perfectly by our whole organization and it worked out. Obviously any time you are successful like that you try to repeat it, but the competitors have a lot of say in that, so there are others who are going to have issue with what our plan is.”
When would be a fan’s best chance to see or meet a driver on a race weekend?
“The best times are if you can get us at autograph sessions and things like that. There’s always time when we’re walking around casually, things like that. Really it’s tough for us because we are so easy to access us at all times with no locker room except for maybe our haulers as that’s our space. We could get away, it’s not that we’re trying to get away. We do have to have some time to ourselves to be professional. It’s tough right before a race honestly. I agree last week, it was hard to even walk to your car and it’s a very small pit road. Things could definitely could get done. I feel like each team should have a 10 foot square space around their car that is just designated for driver and their team. I think we could definitely work on that. I think a lot of tracks are working on that. Honestly, if they’re monitoring the crew guys touching the car so much before the race, the casual race fan can do just about anything they want to the side of the car. It’s really crazy how much – I’ve seen guys just fall over the hood of the car and dent it in. That’s more than any adjustment any of the crew guys are doing. It’s something that could be addressed and will be addressed. It’s constant things to make it better. Our fans have all the access they can handle in our sport. As drivers it’s tough because we want to be polite and sign all the autographs that we can, there’s a point where we have to go out there and focus on our job, for sure.”
Do you think Tony Stewart could come back and compete for the championship?
“Who knows with Tony (Stewart), honestly. We’ve seen years where you are not hearing anything about him and you’re thinking he’s running the worst he’s ever run and then in 2011 he goes on a tear and wins half the races in the Chase. I think he’s a driver that when he locks in, you do great things and I will treat him with the utmost respect going in as I am with the other 14 Chase competitors that I’ve got to race against. There is no time that you can take a Sprint Cup champion for granted, so they’ve won those championships for a reason and I think being the last year he’s going to be even more motivated, so probably even more dangerous.”
How do you reflect back on the Sonoma finish?
“Sonoma was unique because literally going into the weekend I would have said anything in the top-12 to 10 I’ll take it and not even fly out there. About middle of the race, I said, ‘I’ll take a top-five and go home,’ and then three quarters of the way through we’re leading laps, we’re pulling away and I’m thinking, ‘Well, we should be winning this race.’ I mean, things just worked out great for Tony (Stewart). I mean, he pitted and a caution comes out and it really helped him and it took us out of the lead – not necessarily out of the lead that hurt us, but being able to dictate the restarts, so he was able to dictate the restarts and then I got passed by the 78 (Martin Truex Jr.) on a restart and I had to work around him and it just burned all my stuff up before I got to him. In my defense, which I should still not mistakes, is that I’ve never been in that position before. I’ve not been that competitive on road courses and so I didn’t know the proper defensive move going into that last corner. I’d love to have that situation back again, but I really just didn’t know the proper move. I thought I had two car lengths. Looking back at the video, I probably had three and that’s kind of the point where you can just run your own corner and maybe be okay, but I knew he was going to throw caution to the wind and I just – I literally looked up and went to my same braking point and I wheel hopped again and like it was just anomaly. I wheel hopped the previous two laps in a row. That’s how I got beside him in the first place and so I just made a mistake being in a position I’ve never been in before, but now I have confidence that now every road course I go to I can win those races and so I think that hopefully if anything that’s a point for me that I think that when I go back to road course, I know that I can win these races and really going into Sonoma I didn’t go there with a whole lot of aspirations of winning that race. I just haven’t been that great on them. I’ve always struggled for speed. It’s not been because of my cars – it’s been because of me – but now I feel like completely the cycle is possible and I’ll get it before my career is over for sure.”
Did you speak to your team after the Sonoma finish?
“I did. I talked to the team and said I apologized. I mean, I hate to call one of my crew guys out, but I mean he even had a conversation with my girlfriend (Jordan Fish) and said – she says, ‘Hey, we gonna get a win today,’ and he says, ‘We might want to play the lotto instead.’ We hadn’t had the best luck on road courses. I think statistically, I’m probably the worst average finish of any full-time Cup driver over the last six years and so it was out of the blue and I don’t know. I’m sort of happy with second. I also could have been 32nd after the last corner if he was close enough, so who knows, but I’d love to play it over again and have the experience that I have now knowing what I maybe could have done because I’ve never really honestly broke down road course races to figure out the proper defensive move in the final corner of the final lap.”
What would you like brought up at the driver’s council meeting tonight?
“Just on a personal level is why we’re here for three days. I think that’s the biggest thing is especially speedway racing in general practice is very limited. I know it’s tough for the race tracks – they want to have people here as much as possible, but literally on Thursday there’s really not many people out there watching practice. We could do it on Friday and qualify later on and be done and it’s one extra day for these crew guys. I mean, this is a holiday weekend somewhat, so let’s get these crew guys home in a timely fashion I’d say.”
How has winning the Daytona 500 changed your life and how you’re viewed?
“It’s a question to come that’s going to have to come years down the road or answer that’s going to have to come years down the road. I think that I’m only six months out. I mean, obviously a lot of people really – a lot of people were watching that race. A lot of people know just that race because that’s the one race that they tune into to start the year and know it’s our biggest one, so anytime you can win that one it’s awesome – especially in the fashion that we won it. But, yeah, for me it’s just the casual race fan that doesn’t watch racing at all, they know me as the person because they’ve seen me through the media and whatnot winning the Daytona 500. I think what it means for me in the long term I don’t know, but can’t wait to find out for sure.”
Do you enjoy racing at Daytona?
“Yeah, it’s been a great – for some reason, it was about five years ago that something happened on the restrictor plate race tracks where I just – it clicked and I got it. I can name a few instances it’s really helped me, but I don’t want to necessarily say that, but I just feel comfortable. I feel like I know what I’m doing and the results have showed it. Eventually, we’re going to get in a wreck. I think we did at – yeah, we did at Talladega, but I’ve just been very fortunate on superspeedways and the bad finishes that I’ve had it’s not because something I feel like I did. It was something that I could caught up in, so I’ve been fortunate. It’s been a great battle with the 88 (Dale Earnhardt Jr.) probably the last four years with me and him. There’s been a lot of one-two finishes with us and hopefully I’d love to complete the sweep winning the Unlimited, the 500 and the July race. I feel like I gift basket-ed him that dual win on Thursday this year, so I’d like to get him back here in July.”
How did you end up designing your own Camry paint scheme?
“Yeah, I wanted – it was an awesome thing for me. Obviously after the Daytona 500, they presented my crew chief (Dave Rogers) with a nice gift and everything and I remember my first gift from FedEx and it’s material things and it’s all great, but they said, ‘You know, what else do we give you?’ And so they offered me an opportunity to design my own paint scheme for this July race coming back. I didn’t think about the temperature with the color choices for sure, but I just wanted it to be like an old school-type car. This isn’t really what my late models looked like, but just to me I look at the car and I think old school, short track-type paint scheme that they have on super late models, so it’s cool. It’s a lot of the colors that I have on my personal logos. It’s black, red and white, so I think next year if they let me do it, it’s going to be white on white on white.
Do you provide input on your normal paint schemes?
“I get to have a little bit of input for sure, but the people at FedEx are a lot smarter than I am with branding and figuring out what colors pop on certain things and so they’re pretty consistent on doing everything and I’m okay with it.”
