RICHMOND, Va. – Monster Energy Cup Series driver Denny Hamlin said Friday morning at Richmond Raceway that the encumbered finish handed down to his No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing team was unfortunate following this past Sunday’s Bojangles’ Southern 500, especially because he knows he had nothing to do with it.
Joe Gibbs Racing was slapped with an L-1 penalty which includes the two-race suspension of crew chief Mike Wheeler, plus a hefty $50,000 monetary fine. Hamlin will work with interim crew chief Chris Gabehart for Saturday night’s Federated Auto Parts 400 as well as the playoff opener next weekend at Chicagoland Speedway.
“Well, it sucks,” said Hamlin of the penalty. “I know personally, it had nothing to do with winning the races. I’d won five other races at that track well before that. I’d love to line ’em up again. That track is special to me. It was a special weekend all in all. It took something that was super positive and turned it into a negative pretty quick.”
Hamlin, a native of Chesterfield, Virginia who is the defending champion of the final race of the regular season confidently stated Friday that he’s won at Darlington before without inspection violations and feels confidently about the opportunity to do so in the future.
“I’d love to line them up all again, that track is special to me,” Hamlin said reflecting on his 31st Cup career win. “It was a special weekend, all in all. It just took something that was super positive and turned into a negative pretty quick.”
When chatter started to flow down the pipeline that there may have been an issue with the car, Hamlin said that Wheeler went and looked at the infraction himself. Upon review, he agreed it was penalty-worthy and Hamlin stood by his crew chief.
“We can talk about taking wins away in the future, I think it’s definitely a possibility,” Hamlin said. “As long as it’s the same for everyone, I think is key. Make sure when someone else in there with the same violation it gets the same penalty and treatment, even if it’s in the playoffs.
“That’s what makes me nervous – in the playoffs is NASCAR going to do the same things when so much is on the line? Obviously, it’s negative publicity for everyone involved, so I just hopes it’s the same. And I’m fine with taking wins away.”
Giving a deeper insight on last weekend’s Cup race at Darlington, Hamlin said his No. 11 FedEx Toyota was legal when it hit the race track and a grinding 367 laps around Darlington, one of the rougher and toughest tracks on the circuit – took its toll on the car.
Hamlin also hit the wall ate in the race. Nonetheless, whatever the determining factor, Hamlin said the team takes responsibility for what transpired during post-race inspection.
“We got to do a better job going back now that we know what we built in (tolerance-wise) was not enough,” sounded Hamlin. “We’ll fix it and go forward. If the shoe was on the other foot and it was one of my competitors, I would expect the same kind of penalty. We’ll move on and try to win this week.
“To be fair, it wasn’t right at that moment [at the R&D Center]. We didn’t start the race with an illegal car. It worked its way that way. And when I say it worked its way, it was so close. But so close doesn’t matter; it was still over the line. I hate the position I’m put in. I hate the position (Wheeler) is put in, we just didn’t allow for running into the wall with five laps to go. We didn’t allow for the dirt and the grime to get in there and loosen those things up as bad as it did. It’s unfortunate.”
The good thing for Hamlin, he is still locked into the playoffs because of a July 16 victory at New Hampshire Motor Speedway. Hamlin, however, lost five crucial playoff points from the Darlington victory – taking his playoff points total from 12 to seven.
When it comes to the 10-race playoff stretch, those five points could come back to haunt Hamlin and his team come Homestead-Miami (Fla.) Speedway in November.
Oh, to those who offered that Hamlin and his team were “cheating” last weekend, the often-outspoken driver offered his own two-cents on that subject too.
“How many wins does Richard Petty have? Two hundred? One of them was with a big block [engine], so does he really have 199?” Hamlin asked. “Listen, my advice to those who say this or that is all the old-school fans who have been watching NASCAR forever, your driver cheated at some point in their career and they got away with it. The difference is it was inches, not thousandths, because they didn’t measure that stuff back then.
“It’s just a tighter box that we live in today and the engineers and the crew chiefs are so smart they fight for that little bit because they know it can make the difference in the smallest of deficits on the racetrack.”
Follow Chris Knight on Twitter @Knighter01.
