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Denny Hamlin revealed his crew chief Chris Gabehart's reaction to his #11 getting damaged by 23XI Racing's Tyler Reddick. He mentioned facing issues because of the damage later in the race because it couldn't be fixed.
The #11 Joe Gibbs Racing driver started the race in P18 on the ninth row. Running in 20th place at the start of the second stage, Hamlin saw Reddick's Toyota ramming into him after jumping a curb. Reddick, driving for 23XI, a team co-owned by Denny Hamlin, was trying to jump up on the inside of the corner when the curb destabilized him and he rammed into Hamlin.
This caused some damage on the #11 which Denny Hamlin couldn't initially identify. When asked about the incident post-race, he mentioned that his chief Chris Gabehart stated that it couldn't be fixed. He added that he lost confidence in his car for the rest of the race after the incident.
"Yeah, it bent something in the rear end," Hamlin claimed. "I'm not really sure probably a to link or something like that or the control arm. But I just feel like, you know, I felt not very confident in my car after that. It bent something to where in the left hand corners, it was just out of control. But Chris told me he says, I can't fix it, but I can try to make it better handling wise. He did. And it was just good enough there to run the top 15."
Denny Hamlin is seemingly not the best performer on road courses. In the interview, he talked about the large number of road courses on the calendar. He claimed that this was not the case when he was getting into NASCAR, and hence his performance on these tracks is questionable.
"This is not good for my style of driving": Denny Hamlin reflects on road courses in NASCAR Cup Series
The 2024 NASCAR season had five road course races including the one at Charlotte last week. That also marked the final road course race of the current season and is seemingly a load off of Denny Hamlin's head.
Talking about the current calendar, Hamlin mentioned that there used to be only one road course race earlier. He claimed that ovals are his "specialty," and with the addition of superspeedways and road courses, the playoff picture has changed quite a bit, which makes it challenging for him.
"Yeah, I mean, certainly glad these six tracks are over with," Hamlin told SiriusXM. "You know, when I started wanting to be a NASCAR driver a long, long time ago, it was only like one road course on the schedule. And so, you know, oval track racing is what I grew up doing. And, you know, it was my specialty. And, you know, as these playoffs start sort of evolved in NASCAR to be, you know, a little bit more, you know, road course racing, super speedway, and then, you know, the traditional ovals, I'm thinking, well, and this is not good for my style of driving."
Despite a remarkable career, Hamlin never had the chance to celebrate a Cup Series championship victory. However, he is aiming to do so this season. He qualified for Round 8 with a P14 finish at Charlotte. He currently sits in sixth place in the playoffs standings, 8 points short of the top-4 margin.
