TOYOTA RACING – Denny Hamlin
NASCAR Cup Series Quotes
JOLIET, Ill. (July 3, 2026) – Joe Gibbs Racing driver Denny Hamlin was made available to the media on Friday prior to the NASCAR Cup Series race from Chicagoland Speedway.
DENNY HAMLIN, No. 11 Progressive Insurance Toyota Camry XSE, Joe Gibbs Racing
How much will experience matter this weekend?
“It’s probably that much, because going into this practice session with many unknowns as well. I ran some laps here during the test but it’s still one line. I’ve been around long enough to know that a test racetrack and a race weekend track are two vastly different things. So, lots of unknowns, just what line are we going to run? What’s going to be the fastest and as Kyle (Larson) mentioned, we didn’t really go up the racetrack at all during the test, so we don’t know whether the bump more or less the higher you go. It’s always going to be a little bit of, I have some old notes I had in the book that I looked at, but it will be something small, nothing big.”
Why do you think this racetrack may work well with the NextGen car?
“It’s got a good mix of the power and the drag on the NextGen car has been good for, generally, mile and-a-half, two-mile racetracks. It just runs barely slow enough down the straightaway where you barely get a draft, but in the corner this racetrack has options to get out of the wake of the car in front of you so you, so you can usually keep that momentum up by moving around. So the wider the racetrack, the longer the racetrack, the better the racing in the NextGen car tends to be.”
How have you seen how the championship is shaping up this year with the Chase format as opposed to what we’ve seen the last several years with the elimination format and eventually the Championship 4 at the end of the year?
“I certainly feel like the destination of where you want to go is more in your hands. The sample size is bigger. This thing could come down to a green, white, checkered at Homestead, we don’t know. But at least there are other races and restarts that happened that counted just the same, the nine races before that. I like it for that reason that I don’t think that one freak race or incident or win just completely changes the outlook of your championship hopes. I’m very optimistic from the standpoint that generally the bigger the data set the better off our chances are going to be.”
How do you evaluate the dynamic between the teams within Toyota as a manufacturer?
“I certainly think that Toyota has a role in it, but I don’t think Toyota is that much different than any of the other manufacturers. We pay a fee (23XI Racing), so that’s the difference. It’s not like Toyota forces us to work together. We chose to be affiliated with Joe Gibbs Racing and we felt like it would shorten up the learning curve and get us competitive quicker. And now it’s a relationship we still pay, but he relationship definitely goes back and forth. There’s certainly information going both ways through that tunnel, so it works in that kind of way. But it’s not something that is forced by the manufacturers, I would think that probably we get the same amount of stuff. Ourselves and LEGACY, is no different than Penske and RFK. I think that probably we get the same amount of stuff that we share that they get, but we just chose to have an alliance, and that’s what I felt like was the best business decision.”
What level of importance to the manufacturer do you think having a alliance between teams as far as information sharing goes? Is this something that has contributed to Toyota’s success?
“It certainly doesn’t hurt by any means, because you got lots of good drivers amongst that group of seven cars, sometimes eight cars. You got a lot of good crew chiefs and lot of smart engineers on both sides who bounce ideas off of each other as well. It is a benefit, but it’s something that’s not for free. I think it’s a really good deal for Joe Gibbs Racing because you get paid and you get some information, but then for us (23XI) it allows us to hire a lot less people. We could just take the money and hire additional people, but then is that the best way to do it to have two organizations spending the same money on the same thing and getting likely the same answer? That’s not the best way to stack your resources I wouldn’t think. It’s not the entire reason though, that’s for sure.”
As an owner, how do you evaluate future talent in the Truck Series versus the O’Reilly Series?
“You just have a self-built model in your head that this team, their cars are 100% and that’s five cars at 100%. And then the next team, I put them a little lower. I’m not in the trenches and know all the facts, but I hear enough that this team has better engines and this team has better bodies and you just kind of put all of that in your head and say that is where they should be running. Then you find some outliers, well a team that’s in your mind is an 80% resource team performing at a 90% level, well why is that? Is it the drivers, is it the cars? What is it, right? You can just evaluate in that kind of way. There’ no exact science to it from my standpoint. A lot of the guys other than Corey Heim, I’ve been on the racetrack with them before and I can see they can drive well beyond their equipment is supposed to be going in speed. For Corey, there’s just a moment in that Iowa race where he was running for Sam Hunt, I know that car should not be running that fast. There are just little moments that happen like that which get your attention and if it happens more and more often, then you start to have conversations.”
With the vehicles being so different, how can you tell who stands out and how it would translate to the Cup Series?
“It’s really, really hard. The trucks probably drive more similarly to the NextGen car, but it’s really hard to evaluate one over the other. I just look at racecraft. Can someone make a move and put their car in a position that I know is a very difficult position and they come out of it ahead? It really doesn’t matter to me what vehicle they’re driving of the person I’m watching, it makes no difference because I believe the great drivers can adapt to the car they are in. You learn racecraft, then you just adapt your style to get the speed out of the machine that you are in.”
About Toyota
Toyota (NYSE:TM) has been a part of the cultural fabric in North America for nearly 70 years, and is committed to advancing sustainable, next-generation mobility through our Toyota and Lexus brands, plus our more than 1,800 dealerships.
Toyota directly employs nearly 64,000 people in North America who have contributed to the design, engineering, and assembly of over 50 million cars and trucks at our 14 manufacturing plants. In 2025, Toyota’s plant in North Carolina began to assemble automotive batteries for electrified vehicles.
For more information about Toyota, visit www.ToyotaNewsroom.com.
