TOYOTA RACING – Denny Hamlin
NASCAR Cup Series Quotes
LEBANON, Tenn. (May 30, 2026) – Joe Gibbs Racing driver Denny Hamlin, who will be starting from the pole on Sunday night, was made available to the media on Saturday following NASCAR Cup Series practice from Nashville Superspeedway.
DENNY HAMLIN, No. 11 Progressive Insurance Toyota Camry XSE, Joe Gibbs Racing
Did the package feel as expected during practice today?
“No real surprise, just obviously slower corner speeds than we’ve been running here. The typical getting used to for that. But nothing too surprising. We’ll see what happens tomorrow when the track widens out, which it should.”
Did you guys look back at the end of the race at Charlotte from last week and think there might have been a better way to handle that?
“Yeah, if either one of us just commits to letting the other one go past it would have never happened. We both know that whoever can clear will go get the 7 (Daniel Suarez) pretty quickly. We obviously knew rain was near, so everyone is trying to get all the positions they can. You got to slow each other down, but there is just no way you are going to get either one of us to agree. Without the challenge of the other you go take the lead and win, but that just won’t happen.”
Can you talk about your dominance at Michigan?
“It’s high speed and turns left, those are the two things we are typically good at. And Michigan has always been a momentum based racetrack and I feel like that doesn’t relate in a sense of speed, but like the short tracks, the late models I used to run are very momentum based. So I’ve always just been good at keeping high momentum speed up. It’s kind of a hybrid drafting track as well. All of those skills that you have to have just kind of come together and I’ve always been in really fast cars as well, that helps.”
How does it feel to have a fast car and also track position to start tomorrow night?
“The first few laps were super important to kind of understand what we had and what we need to work on for tomorrow. I definitely wanted at least a few laps of practice. Got a good 50 lap run there. Still have some work to do balance wise but the car has speed, so we can fix it from there.”
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