TOYOTA RACING – Denny Hamlin
NASCAR Cup Series Quotes
DOVER, Del. (May 15, 2026) – Joe Gibbs Racing driver Denny Hamlin was made available to the media on Friday prior to the NASCAR Cup Series race from Dover Motor Speedway.
DENNY HAMLIN, No. 11 Progressive Insurance Toyota Camry XSE, Joe Gibbs Racing
What have you learned from simulation and what do you think we are going to learn from practice?
“I don’t know that it’ll look a whole lot different for practice, for instance, but we’re not really going to know how different the racetrack is until we see the truck race later on, and then obviously, as our race starts to play out as well. We don’t really know until we get out there. Obviously, the track looks quite a bit darker than what it has in, when it’s clean, typically at this point of the weekend. Looks like all the application, took and applied, and we’re not going to know till we actually do it.”
What would it mean to you to win your second All-Star Race?
“It’s going to be a different challenge and certainly feel like there’s a lot of excitement around it. I don’t think we’ve ever done any kind of invert or anything before. This is going to be different, and anytime you can adapt to something quicker than the next, there’s a sense of satisfaction there, but for us personally, it’s – can we get a grasp on kind of the new aerodynamic package, at tracks where we have went from one to the other this year, we haven’t been our best, I feel like. We think we’ve made some adjustments for that, and hopefully, we’ll learn something from those first two events at Darlington and Bristol, and we’re going to apply what we know here, and hopefully it’ll work.”
What was on the table for potential changes on the car for the All-Star Race that ended up not happening?
“Yeah, some stuff got batted around, but ultimately they were going to try some new splitter stuff, but just didn’t have the manufacturer didn’t do a great job with quality control, and so they wanted to make sure that it was the same for everybody so it’s best to just kind of put a pause on that. I would love to use this race at some point to kind of – have that different package that you can try in a race condition because we try them during tests and you just don’t get the real thing until you get all the cars out there and get them working. Hopefully, it’s on the horizon, and hopefully, eventually we can get the nose of these cars down, the backs of them up, and go racing.”
What things could be done to make the All-Star Race special?
“It’s tough to say. There’s certainly a balance there between kind of novelty and then purest racing. So, it is a little bit different. I haven’t quite a ton of effort into thinking about it to, if I would, maybe have a portion of my brain to have time to think about what could we do to fix the All-Star race or weekend? If it is broke, I don’t know. I just haven’t. I’m sure there’s little things you can do, but obviously we’re going to run 350 laps around here this weekend. I mean, that’s a race. It’s a normal race weekend. We’re going to approach it that way.”
What would be your ideal All-Star format?
“I don’t know. Yeah, I hate to give you an answer that I’d like to change my answer an hour from now if I gave you something, but I don’t know, truthfully, and yeah, I wish I had something.”
How does the resin evolve as more races get run on it?
“I just remember, at Nashville, it just wanted you to keep finding more, which is, why the groove widened out so much. Dover is a track where, historically, the fastest lane is the bottom. If you’re really good and you can work the middle through traffic, you’re going to have a head start. But we all know the Next Gen car needs space, right? It needs wide lanes to put on some of the great racing that we’ve seen. So, I think that I don’t know. I wish I truthfully did know, I would be better prepared coming into the weekend. I’m setting up as if – the bottom’s the way to go, and the feel that I need to have is the same as I had last year, regardless of anything else, that might change two hours from now. I’ll adapt if that’s the case, but I think the truck race probably could be a little bit telling of maybe what we might want or see. I’m looking in the trucks, like just in qualifying here, there’s not a lot of trucks hitting the bottom, and so, is it because it’s grippier up? So typically, here at the track, the darker the part of the racetrack, the slicker it is. It looks like they’re deliberately running in the dark. So, that’s just kind of some of the nuances that – I’m going to sit a little bit of this practice, watch for a little while, and see what it is, and then go approach it from there.”
Can you tell us how impactful it is for 23XI to be up for an award amongst other sports teams next week?
“Yeah, I mean, it’s a big honor and obviously to get the attention of those who nominate, whoever that might be. It is big, and it’s always been our goal is to win on and off the track. We’ve, from the very beginning, we’ve said we’ve wanted to be game changers in the sport and do things a little differently. We had a chance to start a team from scratch; how do you start it? How do you run it? We’ve just tried to create a culture around that place that has been very, very low turnover. I just think that it’s a testament to the people that we’ve put in place. Again, it’s the puzzle that I’ve always talked about, right? My job was to put the big pieces of the puzzle in there and then let them fill out the small pieces to finish the thing off. It’s more of a testament to the people that we have. Me and Michael (Jordan, co-owner, 23XI Racing) get the credit for it, but truthfully, a lot of people have put a lot of effort into it. I mean, everyone from the HR department – they make sure everyone’s experience being with this team is a really, really good one. We go above and beyond, and that was our goal from the very beginning, and it’s great to see it getting recognized.”
Do you feel like your team is a disrupter? When you set down and think about certain things, do you target doing differently than everyone else?
“Not deliberately, and I think that a lot of the legacy teams do a lot of things right. They’ve gotten to this point and been as successful as they are because they found the right way to do it. What’s different about us is that I think that we, lots of times, hire from out of the sport, so people that are coming into the sport for the first time that say in Germany, we don’t do that. When we race over here, we try things this way. We do things this way. So, it just opens up a lot of different questions for us when we are able to hire outside of NASCAR itself, and attract those people to give us new ideas, and sometimes, the answer is what the legacy teams have been doing for such a long time. They found a way to hone it in. Sponsorship and hospitality and all that stuff, that’s still an evolving process of our team and how we want to do it and we’re still working on it and figuring it out. But when we finally do make the next move, it will be because it’s very thought out, and we figure that this is the best way for us, regardless of what landscape has been before us.”
Does having everyone on track for a portion of the All-Star Race take away from the original intent of the All-Star Race?
“No, I mean, it has. I mean, my kind of the knee jerk when I saw it was like, if we’re all going to be racing on Sunday, is it really that special? So, I think it does take away a little bit. I mean, surely it does. Now, they’re going to whittle it down but, yes, I think that taking that many open cars, and again, we’ve expanded it. We went through a swing there in the last 15 years of like, it’s strict, it’s only this, and then it’s this plus this. Now this plus this, plus this. Oh, now, now it’s not just the winner. Now it’s first and second place. Like, we just kept expanding it and we did it with the Playoffs and the Chase and everything. So just trying to be more inclusive of everyone, and so with that, yes, of course, it dilutes a little bit of the feeling of prestige.”
How tuned in will you be on the average finish portion for the main event?
“I’ll just kind of know in my head, right? I’m going to know where I start. Do I gain or lose positions? When I get flipped, do I gain or lose positions, right? The goal, obviously, if I get flipped, I should be gaining positions. So, I think it’s pretty simple for my standpoint. Go get all the spots that you can, and I mean, so it is pretty straightforward in the sense that like there is no laying back in any one of the 75 (lap) segments. It’s my job is to get every spot that I can, and the math will work itself out, and certainly, I think if I can put myself somewhere in the top four to five within that, to get to the last segment, I think I’ll be in a good spot.”
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