BROOKLYN, Mich. -- In the end, Michigan was a good weekend for Denny Hamlin. The Joe Gibbs Racing driver rallied from a 33rd-place starting position to finish second Sunday, moving up three positions in the standings and further solidifying his position in NASCAR's Chase field.

And yet, after watching points leader Kevin Harvick surge to his most impressive race victory of the season, the prevailing sentiment on the No. 11 team seemed to be that much more work remained to be done.

“

We've got more work to do than the rest of the field. If we don't, we're probably going to end up 11th or 12th.

”

-- MIKE FORD

"My feeling is, Gibbs cars have more work to do than anyone," crew chief Mike Ford said. "I feel like we're behind. If you don't feel that way, you're going to get your ass run over, but I feel like we've got more work to do than anyone. We've got to be about perfect to compete for a win, and you see other guys that you know aren't handling as well as you, and they can run just as fast in those situations. We've got more work to do than the rest of the field. If we don't, we're probably going to end up 11th or 12th."

That would surely be a crushing result for a program that's won five times this season -- tied with Jimmie Johnson for most overall on the Sprint Cup tour -- and in the spring and early summer reeled off a 10-race stretch that made the No. 11 team look every bit like the prime contender for the title. Sunday's result left Hamlin still searching for his first victory since the circuit's last visit to Michigan in June, and shaking his head over the little things that seem be separating him from Harvick.

Like horsepower, for one. Hamlin believes his Gibbs team is at a horsepower disadvantage to the Earnhardt Childress consortium that builds Harvick's power plant, and could get some definitive answers to that regard this week as NASCAR tests 16 engines on the chassis dynamometer at its research and development facility in Concord, N.C. But even if his concerns are validated, there are still only three weeks until the Cup Series regular season comes to an end.

"We're not just going to up and make 50 more horsepower in three weeks," Hamlin said. "That's a long process that happens. That's not the only place where I feel like we could be a little bit better. There are several different other areas with our cars I feel like we could be better. The key is to try to identify what that is, then relay that to the guys that make the changes. It's not going to change overnight. It's not going to change over the next three weeks. We can do some things now to help us maybe for later in the Chase. So I've got a list. I've got a list of stuff we need to improve on and hopefully once we do we're just going to be that much stronger."

Like figuring out the electrical issue that Hamlin said hampered him Sunday, for one. Hamlin led at Michigan until Harvick overtook him with 11 laps remaining, and sped off for the victory.

"What cost us the most is, we had some electrical issues again with our race team," he said. "You can probably look up in the last two years how many times I've said that. We just keep having the same problems. So I couldn't run any tire blowers, any brake fans, no [air conditioner] or anything to me. That's what really hurt us in the long run is not having cool tires. It beat us today. [Harvick] beat us with about 10 laps to go. We had about 30 laps on our tires. You know, I'm not sure we really had anything for him anyway, but it didn't make things easier when we weren't able to run any fans all day long. It was a little bit tasking on me to be as hot as I was. Once you're up front, whatnot, your adrenaline gets going, that kind of overcomes things. Mechanically, we need to be a little bit better."

And yet, it says something about Hamlin and his race team that they overcame that and still had a real chance to win. Although the No. 11 car's position on the practice chart never ventured higher than mid-pack all weekend, Ford said the vehicle was much better in average speed, and by Saturday practice he knew he had a top-five car. The problem was getting there from the 33rd starting position.

"Here you don't so much use [the car] up, but it's just difficult," the crew chief said. "You're tuning for traffic all day, and then you don't have traffic to deal with and your car balance changes and you have to readjust. We got there right at the point in the race where we didn't have another run. Had we had another run, we'd have competed a little stronger for the win. But you start 33rd and wind up second with a chance to win, that's a good day."

The points and race results from Michigan certainly bear that out. Of course, the qualifying results give Hamlin something else to add to the list of improvements he thinks his team needs to make in order to mount a serious challenge in the Chase.

"I said last year in Homestead after we won, in order to win the Chase next year, we were going to have to qualify better," said Hamlin, who's started inside the top 10 just twice in his past eight starts. "Right now, we are just struggling so bad with qualifying. It takes us the entire race to get to the front. That's going to be a tough road to travel if we're going to try to win the championship."

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