TOYOTA RACING – Chris Gayle, Adam Stevens and James Small
NASCAR Cup Series Quotes
MARTINSVILLE, Va. (October 31, 2026) – Joe Gibbs Racing crew chiefs Chris Gayle, Adam Stevens and James Small were made available to the media on Saturday prior to the NASCAR Cup Series race from Martinsville Speedway. All three crew chiefs are part of top contenders in this year’s Chase with two races remaining in the season.
CHRIS GAYLE, Crew Chief of No. 11 Kings Hawaiian Toyota Camry XSE, Joe Gibbs Racing
ADAM STEVENS, Crew Chief of the No. 20 Rheem Toyota Camry XSE, Joe Gibbs Racing
JAMES SMALL, Crew Chief of the No. 19 Bass Pro Shops Toyota Camry XSE, Joe Gibbs Racing
For Chris, what have you learned about Denny (Hamlin) and what he likes in a car here at Martinsville?
GAYLE: When I came over in 2025, he thought he was in a spot where he didn’t have exactly what he needs. It was an opportunity to kind of experiment with something a little different, which we obviously did out of the gate. And I think we’ve just kind of exploited what we’ve done there more each time, you know. And I think that directionally has been correct for us. From our perspective, it’s a really clear go get all the points, be as aggressive as possible to stay in contention going into next week.”
Do you still consider this year a success considering all Denny has gone through in the past year?
GAYLE: “It’s a tough scenario for he and the team, right? Coming off last year, all the things he went through in the off season. So, for him to reset himself coming into it, I think you saw that in Daytona. He was asking to give him a few weeks to get into this fully, right? But I think it speaks volumes for him, volumes for our team. Right? There’s lots of things that could have gone awry and let yourself have a hangover from a bad experience the previous year, and none of us did that. It’s also really easy to get focused right now. We live week to week. And everything we can to have the best run next week. And sometimes you punish yourself more harshly one week when it’s a bad week, and then you don’t back away and look at the whole season. We wait till the end of it and do that. But I think four wins, an All-Star race win. We’ve led points for a long time. There are great things we’ve done this year and the majority of the teams in the garage would look at that and would love to have that position. It’s a successful year, no matter what happens. Obviously, we’re still focused on this week, and it’s not over yet. And if we can close the gap, then we have a shot next week.”
For Adam and James, how much of this is trying to keep the 5 (Kyle Larson) honest over the next two weeks?
STEVENS: “That’s a big part of it. This is a 10-race playoff. It’s not a not a nine-race playoff. So, you got to bring your best every week. It’s going to be tough for anybody to make up 70 or however many points we have to make up, but it’s not mathematically impossible. I think it’s going to take some special circumstances, but we’ve been a victim to special circumstances plenty this year. Stuff like that can happen. But you don’t want to put them in a position where all I have to do is show up, and I don’t think they’re quite there yet. But another weekend like last and they certainly will be.”
SMALL: “I think objective for us is just to come out of here and give ourselves a chance next week. So that’s all we can ask for, given the lead they have.”
For Adam, what have you learned about Christopher Bell this year through the injury and kind of the a guy who hates to lose finishing second a lot?
STEVENS: “I think just the resilience has really impressed me. It’s been a very odd year for us to be as competitive as we’ve been and really not have a lot of show for it. And he still brings his best every single weekend, and has done a much better job, I think, focusing forward. He doesn’t get too distracted by whatever happened last week or the week before that, and that’s a big part of the sport. You race a lot of times every year. It’s 38 times we show up, and even these guys beside me that have had outstanding years, 30 times they go home disappointed. And it’s been a few more than 30 for us, but having a season like this is something that we can certainly build off of. We’ve been bringing competitive cars, and he’s been doing a fantastic job. And sometimes that’s just not enough. And I think it’s shown a lot of growth in for Bell, especially through his injury and some of the trials and tribulations we’ve had this year. And I think that’s something that’s going to pay dividends in his future.”
How was any more difficult you feel for him to put this past weekend behind him and look forward?
STEVENS: “He’s driving the race car that we prepared, so it’s not all on him by any means. And we haven’t had green flag stops with this new package, and it’s a pretty small box that we’re in setup wise to make these things do what they need to do on the racetrack and it’s on all of us, it’s not just on him. It’s whoever does the best over these 10 and Talladega is one of those 10 and we didn’t do our best last week and that’s the situation we put ourselves in.”
For James, what has the process been like behind the scenes with him working in the simulator, and how do you approach that on race day as far as you know as giving him cues over the radio?
SMALL: “Really just drive like Denny. As the years have gone here and you know the tires have gotten softer, you’ve lost rear downforce, you’ve got more power. It really goes further away from his natural style, and he’s done a great job this year. He’s taken a huge step forward. You saw it at North Wilkesboro and Richmond, and then this is another beast again. Just the patience you need, all starting from the braking area through the corner back to the gas, we worked really hard on the simulator this week, just trying to work purely on technique and just trying to get him in the zone. It’s what practice is going to be about today, just going out there and running as many laps and just trying to get into a rhythm. It’s very, very different to how he’s typically driven here. I think if he can accomplish that, then we stand a chance because a long run here has really not been our friend in the past.”
What have you guys learned about this year’s Chase that maybe you didn’t think about going into this?
STEVENS: “I think we’re all going to have the same answer. Just the amount of volatility is not something that I would say most of the models would have predicted. But with the winner getting such a bump in the points, it really moves the needle quickly. And a lot of places if you don’t qualify well or you have an issue early and you’re not able to score stage points, it can really compound your weekend. And we’ve seen pretty enormous jumps in one-week spans, but certainly over two week spans of cars going forward. I think that’s something that none of us really expected.”
GAYLE: “It’s the same answer. Although you try to look at it ahead of times and how is this going to play out. You go back and you look historically. But what’s not fair with that historically is you’re applying the points to a different set of rules, right? And people would have probably made different decisions in those circumstances. So it really doesn’t show you. We came into it thinking if we just do what we’ve done the regular season or more, which we haven’t, we’ll be in a good spot. And I think technically we would have been, but you always know that the one thing, like you talk about the points for winning, if someone goes on a stretch like the five did at the beginning of these playoffs, it eliminates all of that head start you might have had and then you necessarily can’t overcome that without a little bit of volatility. If they hadn’t had Phoenix, we wouldn’t be talking here about what’s going to happen next week. The ups and downs of all that over 10 races definitely changes things.”
SMALL: “It’s come down to a series of execution. Like we’ve all had fast cars every week, but some of us haven’t executed perfectly on a week, and that swung the points a lot. And then the rainouts and not qualifying, and not you know guys starting at the back and not getting stage points in the first stage. It’s made small differences, but it all adds up in the end.”
For Chris, for as good as you guys were here in the spring, how much more do you after being so you know close to such a perfect weekend?
GAYLE: “If you bring back the exact same thing, typically that doesn’t work well for you. You know, regardless of how many laps you led, we didn’t win the race, and there were things we could still improve on. And so you’re always looking to find setup changes, tweaks that improve those things that you still needed help with. And I think that’s kind of been our big focus.”
One of the big talking points in the regular season was the seeding, and everybody was thinking that a top six seed was going to be the way to go. Given the volatility that we’ve all seen with how quickly you can gain or lose points, does that does the gap between seeds need to be adjusted at all?
GAYLE: I’ll speak since I’m the one that’s the points. I would like to see that larger, but I’m subjectively playing to my situation currently. I feel like 25 points you saw was pretty small of an advantage and it went away pretty quickly, right? Is that the intent? Is that what NASCAR wants? To me, I feel like you know for 26 races the reward should be a little more than that for the regular season. Just even if it’s proportioned a little more, I don’t know how to exactly look at it, but it feels small for sure to me.”
Suppose the cautions fall tomorrow in a way that the field is able to flip the stages, would you guys pit? Do you feel forced to have to take the points and then try and make it back up later?
STEVENS: “That’s a fantastic question. I think I’m going to need a lot more details to answer that one. Depends on a lot of things. It depends on how our day’s going, right? How competitive our car is, how many points we’re going to score, or giving up scoring. In the type of day that the five is having, so there’s a lot of variables that go into those game time decisions. But certainly that’s on the table, and we’ll all be paying attention to each other in that regard and assessing your risk and reward versus everybody else’s.”
I know you don’t know because you’ve never run the format, but how intense is it to be a crew chief in the NASCAR Cup Series?
STEVENS: “I guess I’ll pipe up and say something. I think a big difference between our sport and a lot of other sports is we’re not playing head-to-head, right? We’re playing against a lot of competitors. Now the list of people that you need to beat and outrun gets a little bit shorter as we go, but with this format, you really have to elevate your game and really eliminate the mistakes as well. And I think you’ve seen that with the five (Larson). You know, much credit to Cliff and his bunch. They’ve been able to elevate from their regular season performance, all the while minimizing those mistakes. Now they haven’t got through all 10 clean. Phoenix didn’t go great, but on average, they’re doing better than the rest of us, and that’s not an easy task and it’s not enough to you can beat another team because they had a bad day, but if you have to beat 16 other guys or whittle it down to five or six or seven, they’re not all going to have bad days. So you have to have an elevated program, and you have to reduce those mistakes. That’s what this playoff format is about. And I would say that we all quite prefer this one compared to the old one. But that’s what we’re up against now.”
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