TOYOTA RACING – Denny Hamlin
NASCAR Cup Series Quotes
MARTINSVILLE, Va. (October 31, 2026) – Joe Gibbs Racing driver Denny Hamlin was made available to the media on Saturday prior to the NASCAR Cup Series race from Martinsville Speedway.
DENNY HAMLIN, No. 11 King’s Hawaiian Toyota Camry XSE, Joe Gibbs Racing
How is your shoulder and do you have surgery scheduled for the offseason?
“I don’t have it scheduled right now, the plan was to scan right after the season to kind of see where it stood. Pain tolerance has been okay. Obviously, late in the season everything just gets a little worse. But generally I’ve been able to manage it inside the race car. I will see if it hasn’t progressed. Maybe if I can nurse it just for one more year and then then do it after that.”
Is there a point total you would like to get it to before Homestead to have a chance at the championship?
“There has to be a catastrophic weekend in there somewhere. It has to start here truthfully to have a chance, and then the chance is still limited, given obviously his track record there. The only thing at Homestead is that if you do have a fighting chance, it is a place where he’s been really good on the wall, and God forbid he scraped it a little too hard and cut a tire. So you just never know. Who knows where it all goes? But again, the chance is very, very slim. I think NASCAR put out all the chances and the odds, and even them acknowledging it’s likely low.”
You have such a long history here at Martinsville. How precarious or how I guess how careful are you going to have to be with your front bumper?
“Yeah, a little bit. Certainly, the structure change is a little different with obviously taking the front bumper out to try to soften some of the low blow stuff. But I don’t know. I think you still can use it a little bit. You have to be careful, though, in my mind, to not give someone an egregious bump because then they typically brake check you, and then that’s when you can really end up doing quite a bit of damage. So you just have to be as courteous as you can with your bumps I think.”
What is on your 23XI to do list in the postseason? And where have you seen the gains? What do you think that your organization has to work on?
“I mean, the list is long. I think that that the team definitely has room to improve. I mean, Tyler’s (Reddick) had a very good year from a win standpoint. Had really strong start to the year, but it’s still just got some little deficits here and there that we got to clean up with the team. And then the other two have just got to get better. Got to win more races and that’s certainly our priorities. Have all of our cars winning on a consistent basis and contending for a championship at season’s end. And I don’t think where we’re at that spot. They’re close. They’re very close. But I still think that it needs a little tweaking here and there to get there.”
Despite the points deficit, how do you approach the next two tracks here, both places you’ve had success at in the past?
“Well, I think it’s the first weekend where there’s truthfully little pressure because I think the expectations are just so low. I think that everyone believes that it’s you know kind of a foregone conclusion, and I’m not saying that they’re wrong by any means. I said so myself on Monday, but it’s just what he got to lose at this point. What is the difference being in second in points versus fifth? Doesn’t matter to me at this point in my career, so yeah, I think it’s a low pressure, high opportunity for the 11 team to go out there and do what we need to do this weekend.”
Given your relationship with Michael Jordan, obviously has a lot of championship success and clutch moments. What do you believe he expects from you as a championship contender? And do you ever worry about falling short of those expectations?
“No, I don’t think so because I think he knows me well enough, kind of off the racetrack, and he knows my competitive spirit. He knows I never go through a period of not putting in the work or not having the drive. I think that no matter what the on-track results may be week in, week out, he knows that that we’re the standard when it comes to preparation and work, and that’s what he was really big on.”
Do you consider yourself clutch?
“Yeah, I mean I think that we’ve performed great in in certain aspects, and I think that there’s been other times where we’ve kind of stubbed our toe when it was you know a big moment. Certainly, 2010 is one that really sticks out to me, where you know patience could have been a little bit more executed there. And there’s always been races here and there. The different difficult part is you don’t know when those key moments are until they afterwards, right? And because of the sport and the formats and things like that, you just never know when those key moments are. And if you know if we come up 18 points short, it’s going to be like a lot like Phoenix, you know. What can I do about flat tire? So, it’s there’s always moments that are clutch moments, but you just don’t know until the exact moment of when that is. And I felt that last year at Phoenix, we did what we had to do, and it didn’t work out in the end, but that was what the format asked us to do and we did it. It was just a unfortunate caution at the end that changed things, and that’s our sport, this is not a one vs one situation. This is a one versus 36, and driver number 18 that has nothing to do with anything in the championship can play a factor in what your result is, and so that’s what makes it a little different and hard to define exactly what a clutch moment is.”
As good as you guys were in the regular season, as strong as you were, and I know in the past you feel like championships have gotten away from you. Does this one feel like it got away from you? Like you lost this, or did Kyle Larson come out and win it?
“I think it’s a little bit of both. I truthfully believe it’s a little bit of both. I think about what we could have done different. I know in Las Vegas, I definitely could have done something different. I was certainly disappointed with the outcome in in Darlington when Michael (McDowell) got in the back of us and took us out of that one. And you know the flat tire. I mean, we can argue whose fault that is, but I think that it’s just one of those things. But you know you also can’t discredit what the five team has done in this eight races, right? And I think what we all under underestimated is that a greatness of eight races can really kind of change what the narrative is on your entire season, right? I think that even when you listen to Kyle and his team pre-Chase. They would have said, ‘Yeah, I don’t know. I don’t think we got what it really takes.’ And all of a sudden, eight races later, where it’s like it’s just a dominating performance. I think they certainly deserve you know all the credit and all the accolades that you know they’re likely going to have in the next few weeks, and certainly shouldn’t be discredited because it’s been, as you guys say, a historic run when you when you look at the numbers, and so that matters and we just haven’t executed as good as what we did. I don’t know that our speed was off except for maybe two races in this Chase from the regular season, but our execution has not been as good, and that that is certainly a factor of why we’re talking about him locking up at this point.”
I’m wondering when we get to the regular season next year, is that going to change the way that you guys view the seeds that the people storylines talk about the seeds?
“Let me bring it back to like Larson. I think Larson is an anomaly in the sense that he’s so talented and their team is so good. If he started 10th in the chase. I think you still believe that they can get hot. I think, generally speaking, whoever’s 15th or 16th in points in the in the Chase or leads into the regular season. Likely not a team that is good enough to get hot and go on a run like Larson has gone on. So, I think you have to judge every team individually in that sense. Does it devalue the regular season? I think it just depends on who you are. And I think that when you’re as good as they are, then then I think you can you can mount you know a massive comeback no matter where you put yourself in the regular season and they broke what we thought the mold was, but even the mold and the models said that someone in sixth or seventh could do it you know no matter who they were. I just think that you have to add in the Larson factor. That’s always going to be the ceiling is going to be a little higher.”
Brad Keselowski has made it known that he’s open for business, looking for a ride for next year. You guys have run a fourth car at times, and especially over the last few years at Daytona. Is there a potential of pairing him with 23XI in the Daytona Clash and the Daytona 500 with how good he is there”
“I don’t know. We can. We’re definitely the old guys of the group. I think that you know what’s probably difficult, truthfully, about that is that I don’t think there’s a long-term there play for us. So then, do you let someone into your part-time program and see all the things and then goes and does something else? That probably would be the challenge for us. I think that he’ll land somewhere good and certainly got enough knowledge and skills still left in them that you know I think you can still be successful.”
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