Hamlin and team to begin experimenting with setups (cont'd)

"And on days when we feel like we're not going to win or not even be on the lead lap, I wouldn't be surprised to see us in the future pull in the garage, completely change our setup, go back out and run a few laps -- and kind of just mess around with set-ups and throw away a weekend. I wouldn't be surprised to see us do that in the future."

Hamlin said his team can always fall back to what was working well enough to get them to second in the points standings if none of the experimentation proves fruitful over the next several weeks. In fact, he said he was surprised he didn't struggle more at Chicagoland.

If it sounds like he and his team are willing to take themselves out of the running at certain upcoming events with the hope of learning something that might help them in the future, well, it's a risk vs. reward ratio that Hamlin said he is willing to run, sacrificing in the short term for hopefully a big payoff in the long term.

"I think we can get back to what we were doing before if we have to," Hamlin said. "But we knew -- I talked to [crew chief] Mike [Ford] about it -- and we knew there were going to be days where we were going to run 30th. I'm surprised we didn't [last Sunday]. This was a car that had never been run. It had a body on it that was all twisted around, different from what we had before."

There is one place, however, where Hamlin said his team absolutely will not risk experimenting. That is at Indy, where he desperately wants to win the Allstate 400 at the Brickyard.

"That's one that we're going to all our guns loaded for. We're not going to be experimenting at Indy, for sure," he said. "I think that in the future, things could change in the way that we do things as a race team. But for Indy, specifically, that's one that we definitely want to win and we feel like we can win.

"So we've got to throw all of our eggs in one basket for that. I think you'll see us get back to the basics for Indy."

After that, who knows? Everything the No. 11 team does from that point forward will be geared toward positioning itself better for the Chase. Being second in points affords Hamlin's crew the luxury of doing some major experimentation.

"We feel like we have somewhat of a cushion as far as the Chase is concerned. Because frankly, if we go into the Chase 12th, as long as we're ahead a certain amount of whoever is 13th, it really doesn't matter," Hamlin said. "Yeah, it looks good on paper to be second in points -- but the wins are what matters.

"To put ourselves in position to win more races and be at our best at the end, we're going to have to experiment -- because even the wins aren't going to mean squat if we run terrible in the Chase. And the way that we're going to run better in the Chase is to mess around now and learn what's right and what's wrong for those last 10."