Toyota Daytona 500 Driver Quotes
Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series (MENCS)
Daytona Media Day – February 22, 2017
Toyota driver Denny Hamlin was made available to the media at NASCAR Daytona Media Day:
Denny Hamlin, No. 11 FedEx Express Toyota Camry, Joe Gibbs Racing
It’s been a long time since anybody won the 500 back‑to‑back. Why is this race so hard to go back‑to‑back?
“The odds are stacked against you. I mean, if this was Martinsville, I’d say the odds were really good, or Richmond, or somewhere like that. But Daytona, we all know that the entire field could win the race. We’ve seen very unexpected winners in the past. It’s just because, you know, there’s a lot of attrition, a lot of things that can happen. There’s just more drivers that can win this week than what could in, say, Atlanta next week. So that makes it very, very hard to repeat. That’s why you’ve seen just a few drivers do it.”
What is your drafting technique?
“It’s definitely different as far as the Daytona 500 is concerned, coming back. Our finish last year was the last one. I know for only two more days people are going to be talking about me and the last one, unless I do it again. We’re almost going to be forgotten. Before us, I think it was Joey. Hardly anything is ever said about Joey and his 500 because it wasn’t the last one. That’s why I enjoy these moments of coming back, this year especially Media Day, because people are talking about the last one. That fuels my passion to be the last one again after Sunday. Hopefully we’re rolling one Daytona 500 car out and rolling another one into the museum. That’s my motivation to do this again. But, yeah, I mean, there’s several different techniques into drafting. Brad and those guys are very aware of them. There’s probably a handful that use the same techniques, but only probably a handful. Those are the guys you see up front on superspeedways just about every time.”
Is there anything that you can do as a group to stay together to fend that off now that you’ve seen it once?
“Well, I think we were almost selfless to a fault at the end of the race. We had a plan to work together obviously throughout the entire race. It kept us up front the entire race. At the end those guys were committed to staying in a line and do what we were planning to do. Those guys just took advantage of that. I think if it happens again, we have an alternate plan. The same ideas are not going to continue to work over and over. You have to come up with something new, something to keep them off guard. Not just Penske, but there are going to be many other contenders in the mix of it that are not just going to allow us to go out there and lead all the laps. We got to be ready for it. We got to come up with a new plan. That’s what our job is to do.”
What makes you feel like you can be the guy that wins back-to-back Daytona 500s?
“Probably the last four years of my career and what we’ve been able to do on superspeedways is what gives me that confidence. We’ve led a bunch of laps and won a lot of races on superspeedways over the last few years. I feel confident. I feel confident in the technique. I feel confident in the work that I’ve put in off the racetrack to become good at these type of racetracks. It’s showing up with results every time I hit the racetrack, especially this racetrack. I think there’s something about this track being more narrow than Talladega that makes me more successful at this track. I’m not sure what it is, but I think there’s something to it where the narrower groove, the tighter pack of air, that makes me better here.”
