Welcome back, Denny Hamlin.
On Sunday afternoon, in decisive fashion, the driver of the No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota returned to Victory Lane after a 31-race dry spell—not to mention a 10-year drought at Martinsville Speedway.
In one sense, Hamlin underscored a return to his roots. The 44-year-old from Chesterfield, Va., who rose to NASCAR’s top division though the late-model ranks, claimed victory on NASCAR’s shortest and most venerable venue.
Four of Hamlin’s five most recent NASCAR Cup Series wins have come on traditional short tracks—two at Bristol, one at Richmond and Sunday at 0.526-mile, paper-clip-shaped Martinsville.
Interestingly, before that five-win stretch, Hamlin won only once on a track shorter than one mile in his 15 previous races. That victory came in 2022, the first year of the Next Gen race car, at Richmond, Hamlin’s home track.
If there’s one significant takeaway from Hamlin’s win at Martinsville, it’s that there is still room for innovation and creativity in the Gen 7 car. In the five starts at Martinsville immediately before Sunday’s victory, Hamlin had posted top-five finishes in four of the races, but victory had eluded him.
As a consequence, Hamlin’s new crew chief, Chris Gayle, made radical changes to the setup of the No. 11 Camry. These were not just tweaks; they represented a new approach to Hamlin’s short-track program.
“I’ve just been so close over the years here,” Hamlin said after the race. “I haven’t had a dominant car like this in about 10 years—truthfully… The pit crew kept me up front—no issues. We had some long runs there. That’s really where I typically excel.
“And, man, they just did an amazing job with the car this week. We worked really hard with coming up with a new setup. What we had in the past just wasn’t good enough. It was good enough to run third to fifth, but we’ve got to come here and win in the fall, and so we feel like this is a great step in the right direction.”
Hamlin wasn’t the only driver who enjoyed a breakout day at Martinsville. Christopher Bell, who surprised himself by winning the pole position in Saturday’s time trials, finished second. Bubba Wallace, who drives the No. 23 Camry for the 23XI Racing team co-owned by Hamlin and Michael Jordan, ran third.
That result marked a profound difference from last year’s spring race, when William Byron led Hendrick Motorsports to a 1-2-3 finish.
It also marked a profound reversal of fortune among the Joe Gibbs Racing drivers. After June 23, when Bell demonstrated his expertise on wet tires in a victory at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, JGR did not win another race last season and was shut out of the Championship 4 for the first time since NASCAR adopted the current elimination format in 2014.
Hamlin’s victory further validated the shift of his former crew chief, Chris Gabehart, to competition director for the entire organization. That move brought about the pairing of Hamlin with Chris Gayle, whose career previously had been characterized by work with young drivers in both the NASCAR Xfinity and Cup Series, most recently with Ty Gibbs.
“Chris (Gayle) has had a tough go at it,” Hamlin said. “When we didn’t have a great weekend, social media people were just out to get him. They think he’s been the problem for all of these years. It’s just not the case.
“I’m really happy for him, because I think he’s had the tough task of having such young drivers his whole career. That’s really hard to do. It’s hard to put in what you know is the fastest thing, then expecting a rookie to go out there, someone that’s really young, to get the most out of that. Then having the race craft to manage it through the whole race. It’s really, really hard to do.
“I think him having someone probably as laid back as I am for the first time in his career is probably making his job a lot easier.”
It was also incumbent on Hamlin to learn to trust his new crew chief. The success of the new setup at Martinsville is an indication that’s already happened.
“That’s what you have to do when you have a new crew chief coming in there, is you’ve got to believe in him and let him be the leader that he is,” said Hamlin, who has now won Cup races with seven different crew chiefs.
With Bell’s three-race winning streak earlier this season and Hamlin’s triumph on Sunday, JGR has now won four of the first seven races this year.
Hamlin’s win at Martinsville was the 55th of his career, tying him with NASCAR Hall of Famer Rusty Wallace for 11th all-time. His next target is 10th-place Kevin Harvick, who won 60 times before retiring after the 2023 season.
The more immediate objective, however, is a return to the Championship 4 with the chance for Hamlin to win a Cup championship for the first time. He hasn’t competed for a title since 2021, when he finished third among the four eligible drivers.
With a new approach to the short-track car, with its possible extension to the one-mile flat track at Phoenix Raceway, a long-awaited championship for the veteran driver isn’t beyond the realm of possibility.
Source: Reid Spencer | NASCAR Wire Service
