LONG POND, Pa. -- To hear Denny Hamlin tell it, his past success at Pocono Raceway means nothing heading into this Sunday's Pocono 500.

His lap speeds during Happy Hour indicate otherwise. But then there is rarely anything happy about Hamlin, whose own crew chief, Mike Ford, said Saturday that he's tired of hearing his driver complain about all the bad luck he's supposedly had this season and last.

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If you've got everything stacked against you, you're not going to run top 20 here. So is it really [lots of bad luck] or is it not? I say no. I say it's not even close.

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MIKE FORD

"Yeah, everybody talks about that luck deal because Denny gets out of the car and says, 'Oh, God! We have the worst luck of all!' Because he's the lead spokesperson for this team. But the thing is, it's not true," Ford said of his and Hamlin's No. 11 Toyota team, which is currently seventh in the Sprint Cup Series point standings. "I've got a hard job of trying to field that and sway that, because it's not true. You wouldn't be sitting in the top 10 if everything was stacked against you."

Earlier, Hamlin certainly painted a different, darker picture.

"It's just bad luck right now," Hamlin said when asked about his fortunes during recent races. "Of the last 36 races, I've had probably three races where we lucked into a better finish than what we deserved -- and I've probably had 20 that went the other way.

"It's worse than bad. I've had bad luck [before], but I don't know about this. I'm going to ride it out until it ends. That's the thing, though -- for as much bad luck as we've had, we're not 20th in points. We're still digging."

Ford said the point to remember is that if the supposed recent string of misfortune was as bad as his driver seems to believe, they would indeed be 20th or worse in the standings. And they're not.

"If you're hammered bad [with poor luck], you're not going to be in the top 10," Ford said. "If you really look at it, we have a whole lot more things go our way than what don't. I know he doesn't view out, so he thinks it's just all him -- which is completely untrue. We've had a lot of things go our way.

"If you've got everything stacked against you, you're not going to run top 20 here. So is it really [lots of bad luck] or is it not? I say no. I say it's not even close." (Continued)