TOYOTA RACING – Denny Hamlin
NASCAR Cup Series Quotes
KANSAS CITY (April 18, 2026) – Joe Gibbs Racing driver Denny Hamlin was made available to the media on Saturday prior to the NASCAR Cup Series race from Kansas Speedway.
DENNY HAMLIN, No. 11 National Debt Relief Toyota Camry XSE, Joe Gibbs Racing
What are some of the things you are looking for in practice and qualifying here in Kansas?
“Because we’ve had some success here, I’ll know right away, whether it’s got all the good feels to it that it’s supposed to. Not a whole lot of changes from last year. We’re doing a little bit of fine tuning to see if we can slightly improve what we had here in the fall, but that was obviously very strong, and so the room for improvement is very small, but you still got to keep going for those margins, and, there’s just little things I feel when I go in the corner that need to be a certain way, and if I’ve got that, then it’s good.”
How much are you watching with Chevrolet is doing this weekend?
“Zero. zero. Not even a second.”
Why?
“Like, if they were a second faster lap, like, what am I supposed to do about that? You know what I mean? There’s nothing I can do. All my focus is, like, how can I get the most out of my car? I know that if I do that, then we’re going to be right there. So, not really looking at any other cars, manufacturers, and there’s certain guys that are historically really good here, and some of them are in Chevrolets. I absolutely will be using them as like my baseline of how I practice kind of verse them with a certain offset of my mind, knowing that, I’m typically not super fast here on Saturdays, but it’s just a comparison of that. It’s not necessarily – I need to look out for, see how fast they are.”
What do you want to get out of the Chicagoland test and are you at an advantage having run that track before?
“I mean, maybe. Maybe a third of the field hasn’t seen it. I don’t know. I don’t know if it’s an advantage. The advantage comes from having the track time. That’s ultimately where the advantage comes from. Now, that surface hasn’t seen racing in quite some time. So, what we have to do is temper our expectations of what happens out there on the test, we’re going to be going out there probably blowing dust off the thing for a few days. When we go back for the race weekend, I think that track will be totally different. But the good news is we got some good comps, which is the guys that are going be running there for the other manufacturers are guys that I would suspect, we’re going to have to race, but there is some sort of advantage knowing that I have run well there, have won there, and know what a car needs to feel like at that track. I have no idea what kind of conditions it’s in till we get there.”
How messy were some of the conversations last fall after the two best cars didn’t win?
“It certainly played a factor, kind of in the manufacturer battle as well, right? I mean, you go from winning one to now your competition actually won. There were definitely a lot of negatives to the way that race ended, but it certainly was I just feel like, I was trying to go for it, certainly, and used a little bit too much aggression, for sure, in turn three. But overall, you’re going to have that in racing. When you have teammates, manufacturer guys that you all share information with, we’re going to always be right around each other. So sometimes those racing incidents happen in a one out of 20 times.”
What has been the biggest surprise about racing under this new points format?
“Nothing has really surprised me. I think the format is doing what it was designed to do, which is reward the cars that run up front, finish up front, and win races. I thought when we were talking about kind of where the format was going to go and whatnot, I kind of resigned to the fact, well, we’re going to break this thing up into three, four races, and still have cutoffs and stuff, and, when they went all the way, it was shocking from my perspective, but it was a wow, I wish this had been around for much longer. So, I think it’s going to reward your top guys, and you’re going to see, I think you’re going to continue to see them continue to pull away because they’re the ones that are winning and getting those 15 extra points in the regular season. They’re going to be higher in the regular season points. Other than that part, nothing else has changed in the regular season. There’s no extra points for anything else other than just winning. So, I don’t necessarily feel like it’s any different than any other year.”
On your podcast, when you didn’t know how Chase Elliott won – did you really just forget?
“I really forgotten (laughter). Yeah, I had no idea. I can’t hold, but so much, like, when something else new comes in, something has to go out (laughter). You know what I mean? I mean, but I figured it out. The main thing was that, I mean, for the last six years, if someone else wins a Kansas race, I’m just trying to figure out how we didn’t win, because we’re always just so fast here. We found 10 to 12 different ways to not win here, and I thought I saw the stat this week that there has only been, I think (Kyle) Larson’s been the only repeat winner here of the last 11 races, and it was like, the fact that we haven’t is just criminal. So, hopefully we can change that.”
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