DARLINGTON, S.C.: Approaching the halfway point of the regular season in the NASCAR Cup Series, Denny Hamlin would hit the reset button if he could.
Entering Sunday’s Goodyear 400 at Darlington (S.C.) Raceway, the 12th race of the Cup Series season, Hamlin has just one top-10 finish.
One.
Now, the one top-10 finish is the highest top-10 finish that a driver could get as Hamlin scored the win in April at Richmond (Va.) Raceway likely cementing him into the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs, but the other 10 simply have been a nightmare for the 47-time Cup winner.
And when it appeared that Dover Motor Speedway could be the start of a turning point for Hamlin and his No. 11 FedEx Toyota Camry team, the curse reared its ugly head.
After leading the race early twice for 67 laps, Hamlin encountered a problem on pit road when a tire fell off his race car which is an automatic four-race suspension of the crew chief Chris Gabehart, jackman Derrell Edwards and front-tire tire changer Blake Houston.
Later in the race, Hamlin while on the rebound and racing inside the top-five was collected in an accident Cody Ware spun on the frontstretch and Hamlin had nowhere to go.
Hamlin after qualifying second settled for a distant 21st.
While Joe Gibbs Racing has filed an appeal and has those three members of his team at Darlington this weekend, Hamlin on Saturday morning before practice opened up about his 2022 season so far.
“It’s been frustrating. I mean, honestly, it’s just been, you know, week after week of being the coyote it gets the anvil dropped on its head,” said Hamlin. “I mean, I don’t even know how else to explain it.
“I mean, even after the wheel falls off, I just told my team at Dover you know, I think we got back to about 10th or 12th or something in the middle of one run. I said, if we don’t just, you know, screw up from here, we’re going to feel like this is just incredible. I mean, my car’s been really fast.”
But it hasn’t been just crashes or a tire falling off that has throttled back the start to his 17th full year of Cup competition, it’s been an array of issues.
“Las Vegas, I had the best car and was leading until I missed a shift and like, it’s been a lot of things that have certainly kept us from getting our result from looking the way it should,” explained Hamlin.
“How do you believe? I mean, one thing that I noticed, you know, my team doesn’t need to convince me how strong we are or how good we can be, but I’m 20 whatever in points, and this is before last week, and Chase (Elliott) is leading and we had a better average running position on the race than Chase.
“And we’re 23 points difference in points. So, our performance when we’re not at Martinsville running 30th has been really good all year. We’ve had things that just have broken.”
Through the first 11 races, Hamlin has suffered four DNFs (did not finish), a stat that was virtually invisible for the Cup Series co-owner of 23XI Racing for several seasons, but a crash in the season-opening race at Daytona, a drivetrain issue at Las Vegas, another crash at Atlanta and losing an engine at the Bristol (Tenn.) Motor Speedway Dirt has all contributed to the headache Hamlin and his No. 11 team have faced so far.
“I’ve had more mechanical failures this year than I’ve ever had,” he explained. “Again, you know, some of these parts that we don’t control and NASCAR is continuing to change them and develop them to make them better so we don’t have a lot of problems, but we’ve just been kind of the poster child of the ones that break things.
“And then last week, you know, what can I do? I just do, the 51 spun there and I just didn’t, didn’t get around, run into him. It’s been unfortunate, but I can tell you it’s a lot different than running top-10 every week and trying to figure out how you’re going to get enough speed to win. That’s what I’d really like to be worried about.”
Following the conclusion of next weekend’s NASCAR Cup Series race at Kansas Speedway, the series will be exactly halfway through the 26-race regular season.
Hamlin believes their chance to win the regular-season points championship is completely out of the picture, his focus remains on stage wins and race wins – and earning as many potential Playoff points as possible that will assist Hamlin in his quest to earn his first Cup Series championship.
“We’ve given up on the regular-season points,” sounded Hamlin. “And even getting in the top-10. I’m not even sure. So for us, it’s actually simplified our strategy, we go for Playoff points only. So, when you see the field start splitting because they want stage points or whatever, you know where the 11 stands from this point on.
“We’re trying to get five points at the end of the race and two for the Playoffs during stages. So, it actually simplifies our strategy for the regular season.”
And while unlucky a complete spiral of poor race finishes drops Hamlin out of the top-30 in the championship driver standings and makes him ineligible for the Playoffs, Hamlin had a quick rebuttal.
“If I drop out of the top-30, this would be my last season for sure,” he said.
The frustration remained for Hamlin Saturday at Darlington’s “Too Tough To Tame Track.”
After turning the third quickest lap in practice on Saturday morning, Hamlin qualified 22nd after experiencing a mechanical issue and vented his continued frustration of a challenging year.
“It was fine through (Turns) 1 and 2 and something started locking up halfway down the back. I don’t know. It’s just so frustrating right now,” vented Hamlin.
Early speculation from the NASCAR Cup Series garage that Hamlin could be forced to start tomorrow’s Goodyear 400 from the rear of the field as Gabehart believed the engine was expiring during Hamlin’s qualifying lap.
Before the hiccups in qualifying, Hamlin had an upbeat approach to the Darlington weekend, where he is a four-time winner, including the series’ most recent visit in September 2021.
“I’m looking forward to it. Myself, (Kyle) Larson, (Kevin) Harvick, we were able to do tests here a couple months ago, a tire test,” Hamlin said early Saturday morning. “But yeah, I mean, you know, we weren’t all that great during that test, but we’ve learned so much since then. And it seems like our team, in general, is getting better as the season’s going on.
“And now we’re starting to get some good data points where we’re going back to tracks that are similar, we can create setups that are a lot more competitive. So, I’m really confident going into this weekend that if we don’t have any trouble that we will be in contention.”
Editor’s Note: Upon inspection of the No. 11 FedEx Toyota Camry in the garage following qualifying, the Joe Gibbs Racing team confirmed that the rear floor panel that connects to the diffuser came loose and was rattling and is what caused the vibration, not any issues with the engine. Hamlin will still start at the rear of the field Sunday afternoon after the team replaced the rear diffuser.
Follow Chris Knight on Twitter @Knighter01.
