For any driver, a win in their hometown can be the sweetest victory of their career. Hamlin has experienced that in the past – twice – at Richmond International Raceway. Now the Virginia native hopes to repeat that success on Saturday night.

The only thing that stands in his way, though is his 42 fellow competitors and the lack of success by Joe Gibbs Racing recently on the short tracks. Hamlin finished sixth at Bristol, followed by a 19th place finish at Martinsville Speedway, a track where he normally is battling for the lead all day.

“We’ve spent some time doing some short track testing during the off weekend to try to get better,” Hamlin noted. “I feel like over these last couple years — really since these Generation 6 cars, we as an organization have struggled. We’ve really lost our edge, I guess you could say on these short tracks.”

In his last three races at Richmond, Hamlin has failed to finish in the top 10 and repeat the success of years past.

“We’re trying to get some of that good feel in the car back,” Hamlin continued. “I think we took some steps forward today in practice. Still not where we need to be by any means, but definitely should perform better than we did at Martinsville.”

Beyond the short tracks, Hamlin’s season hasn’t been up to expectations with only two top-10s in the first seven races this season.

“Our cars are a little bit off right now,” Hamlin commented.”There’s a lot of little pieces and parts of our car that is a little off just a little bit, which really gets magnified — especially when a couple teams have hit on something that really has given them an advantage at this point because they’ve found a setup that is really working well. We’re kind of getting split by that at this time, but like I said — we’re getting better.”

Hamlin feels that each time his team gets on the track they’re learning and they still have all of their tests available for the second half of the season if need be.

“Obviously we can save all the tests we want for the Chase, but if you’re not in it, it really doesn’t matter,” Hamlin commented. “We’ve got to get our cars running a little bit better than what they are right now.”

Certainly improvement has been despite the lack of results on paper as Hamlin has been improving with each passing week. Based on the improvement and the success of their test, Hamlin feels that this is a good time for them to come to Richmond.

“We went from a very subpar car the first practice to, in just one hour later, we feel like is somewhere around a top-five car,” Hamlin commented. “We’re making gains and heading in the right direction. Just as a driver, I’m so impatient — you want things. I feel like I want to take advantage of things that are at these race tracks because these are the race tracks that we perform so well at in the past, but you want to have the best of the best.”

Being able to pull off a win in front of the hometown crowd would be huge, however it’d be even bigger for other reasons. A win would help begin to solidify Hamlin’s Chase chances. Hamlin also feels it’s important due to the fact that he missed the race at Auto Club Speedway as a result of a piece of dirt in his eye, and the fact that he’s lost points at other races this year where he shouldn’t have.

“It’s a fine balance that I wish we could have a win,” Hamlin said. “We’re so far off with our cars right now, I wish we could try some dramatically different setups and things, but we still have to keep the points thing in mind if for some reason we don’t get a win — we need to be one of those guys that are high enough in points to get a berth that way.

“It really plays into the advantage of those drivers that do have wins to really start to work on different areas for these next few months before the Chase to improve their cars. It’s a tough spot for us, because like I said, we would like to get that win, but we also have to make sure we put a setup in the car that is going to get us a good run as well.”

While winning is important, Hamlin says that pressure to get that win and lock your way into the Chase hasn’t set in yet. The driver of the No. 11 FedEx Camry says that’ll probably start to set in late June and you’ll start to see teams mix it up and perhaps try to pull that ‘Hail Mary’ move to win a race.

“At this point, where we’re at with our organization, I think we’re in a very slow process to get our cars better and we still have great race cars and great pit crew and the things that kind of keep us at least in contention every single week is how solid the organization is,” he added. “We definitely know that we are a little bit behind and it’s going to take a little time. We’re going to try to be patient with that. The changes and our speed is not going to change overnight, but it will change in the next month or two. I’m looking forward to that.”

There aren’t many tracks on the NASCAR circuit that you can say that Jimmie Johnson isn’t good at – however, Richmond is one of those. In 24 career starts at Richmond, Johnson only has eight top-10 finishes. In the last three years, Johnson has only two top-10s in those races with two of those finishes being outside of the top 30.

“We suck here.  We’re terrible and hopefully we are a lot better this weekend,” Johnson commented. “The last couple trips especially – we have been junk.  So the results don’t reflect the effort, so that is the disappointing part.  And I know that Chad has worked very hard once again to get us a good car and hopefully it will be on the track and we will have good speed right off the truck.”

While some tracks a driver can say they struggle for this reason or for that reason, Johnson says that his team doesn’t quite know why they’e struggled so much at Richmond. He says that they’ve tried many different avenues to hopefully correct their struggles, but none of them have worked out yet.

Few places and things can get underneath Johnson and crew chief Chad Knaus’ skin, but without a doubt Richmond is one of them as Johnson says it’s frustrating to continue to struggle at one particular track on the schedule.

Johnson did recalled a time when the track wasn’t so frustrating, which was when track promoters used to put a sealer down on the track, which helped widen the groove.

“You could move around the race track to find some grip and really get your right sides (tires) on the edge to get some grip and speed out of the race car,” Johnson commented. “It might be something in that but they don’t have sealer down so I can’t count on that this weekend.”

Despite the frustration and struggles, Johnson says he still enjoys coming to Richmond as the track puts on a great show for the fans, adding that there should be more short tracks on the schedule.

In trying to search for those answers, certainly extra hours begin to get added on by a crew chief and team. However, that’s nothing new as Chad Knaus is known as one of the most hard working crew chiefs in the garage. Over the years, though, Johnson has encouraged Knaus to take more time off and not work as much as he has.

“I am surprised he has made it as long as he has working the hours and for the years that he has been in this sport,” Johnson added. “But unfortunately and usually when he does take time off and he returns, and if we don’t have the performance that we should – then he thinks the two are related.  Just because he took two or three days off for himself, and we have two or three bad races, there is no correlation there.  But in his mind and the way he operates, he thinks ‘well I shouldn’t vacation, I am not supposed to vacation, I am supposed to work around the clock’.”

Johnson says that he continues to push Knaus to take the time off and relax, however hasn’t been able to find a total balance yet.

“I hope he does find better balance because the guy deserves it and he is not going to last 10 more years in this sport if he works around the clock like he has,” Johnson continued.