HOMESTEAD, Fla. -- In many ways, they are NASCAR's Odd Couple.

Denny Hamlin is Oscar Madison to Mike Ford's Felix Unger. Well, not quite -- but it's close. Then again, despite all the bickering, Oscar and Felix were pretty tight buddies; Denny and Mike are not.

But somehow Hamlin and Ford make it work. They head into Sunday's Ford 400 at Homestead-Miami Speedway with a chance to make history, holding a 15-point lead on four-time defending champion Jimmie Johnson and a 46-point advantage on Kevin Harvick in the Chase.

Hamlin drives the No. 11 Toyota for Joe Gibbs Racing and Ford is his crew chief. Team owner Joe Gibbs said it may be an odd pairing, but it works.

"The crew chief-driver relationship is difficult to hit on just right," Gibbs said. "Sometimes we look and say, this is the dream match-up, and it doesn't work out at all. And then you put together something that you say, this is kind of oddball, and it works great.

"That one I don't think you can explain. It's a chemistry, it's a feel. They've got to be able to communicate with each other."

Rough times

There was a time when Hamlin and Ford were doing more feuding than communicating. It occurred during the 2007 season, their second together. Hamlin was coming off a rookie season in which he won the first two Cup races of his career and finished a surprising third in the final point standings.

It got bad enough during one stretch that both Hamlin and Ford said they weren't sure their partnership would survive.

"There were a couple instances, but 2007 definitely was the toughest as far as our relationship," Hamlin said. "We were coming off my rookie year where we finished third in the points. We automatically said that if we came that close my rookie year, we definitely should be Cup champions the next year.

"Then every race that I lost at the end of races because the pit crew made mistakes or we made bad calls (on strategy), it just ate at me. I must have led every single race the first half of that season, and then the last 20 laps we would find a way to lose every single time. That was very trying for me. I was like, 'I'm going out there and doing my job, but they aren't doing theirs.' "

It was left up to Ford to sit down with Hamlin and explain to him that it wasn't always the rest of the team's fault. Ten years Hamlin's senior at age 40, Ford said what had happened to a large degree was that his driver, so eager to hear all the veteran crew chief had to say only a year earlier, had begun second-guessing many of his decisions.

"We went through a period of time where when Denny first came on, he had a lot of respect for what I said, and then he went through a period where he was learning for himself. And through his adolescent years as a driver, he tested the waters and questioned a lot of things," Ford said. "It got tough for a couple of years."

Not "best of friends"

So they had to talk it out. It wasn't the first time the two had a long sit-down session.

"You know, right up from the beginning, I told him, 'We're not going to be the best of friends; this isn't what this is about. But professionally I'm going to support you, you support me, and we need to know that profession comes first in this sport,' " Ford said. "We got that right up front in the first year and understood that, and that relationship has worked out well."

Ford is 40 and sometimes appears to act older. He is married and the father of two. Hamlin is 30, single, and still tends to act more like 18 sometimes, although far less often than earlier in his career. So neither ever had illusions about spending lots of time socializing together away from the track.

"We're not the best of friends," Ford admitted. "We don't hang out together and do a lot of things away from the race track, and for good reason. I'm settled with a family and he's single and likes to go out and do things and be a part of the community and get out. I'm just not that way."

Yet on the track they eventually found a happy medium that this season has paid off with a series-high eight wins. Hamlin said it goes all the way back to when they finally ironed out their differences during the 2007 season.

It has helped mold Hamlin into a more mature, happier person, too.

"Mike just explained to me all that goes into winning these races. It's the mental toughness and all that, too," Hamlin said. "Until I understood that, I could not be happy. I could not find happiness only with winning because then I thought we should be winning all the time. When I learned how to deal with the bad days, too, that's when I started having a whole lot more fun and was a turning point for me in this sport.

"We had a test in Milwaukee, where Mike and I hadn't talked for like a week -- at least from the previous race day to maybe the Thursday before the next race. And we sat down on the pit wall and didn't even test for the first two hours, because we just sat there and talked about how was I going to be happy. Because at that time, I was just constantly miserable over our performance at the end of races. Once he realized where I was coming from and I got a better idea of where he was coming from, our relationship has been great ever since."

Ford couldn't agree more.

"You see a lot of relationships fail after two or three years, and we were at that point where I didn't understand him sometimes and he didn't understand me sometimes," Ford said. "But the more you communicate you're able to move through those times, and that's when things really get good."

Deja vu?

Not that they still don't have their moments -- such as last Sunday in Phoenix, when Hamlin questioned during a post-race interview why Ford didn't order him to try to save fuel toward the end of the race. Hamlin, who led a race-high 190 laps, was forced to pit for gas while Johnson, Harvick and others stayed out, and ended up finishing a disappointing 12th.

Both have said repeatedly this week that they've already discussed it and put it behind them. Ford said bluntly that Hamlin didn't have all the information he needed to make an informed, intelligent comment about the fuel-mileage matter, but now he does.

Meanwhile, Gibbs has watched over it all and believes he is seeing the continuing development of a championship-caliber tandem similar to the one between former JGR driver Tony Stewart and crew chief Greg Zipadelli. They won two championships together at JGR before Stewart left to form his own race team.

"That's a very hard chemistry between crew chief and driver. As a matter of fact, that relationship normally doesn't last very long -- and the reason for it, I think, is that when you go through the lows, it's very, very hard to stay together and work your way through those," Gibbs said. "And you're going to have lows in motorsports. You're going to hit the bottom.

"It's hard to keep that relationship together. I think those two guys, it's a certain type chemistry that you kind of hit on. Sometimes it makes no sense at all. ... To be quite truthful, when we had Zippy and Tony, they would pretty much get after each other, even during the race. They were both fiery, and you'd say, 'Hey, man, this is not going to work,' and yet they had a great way of accomplishing things.

"I think it's a hard one to find that chemistry. Somehow Mike and Denny, I think they have it."

Ford said it began developing from Day One, when his considerable experience blended with Hamlin's youthful exuberance. But he said their chemistry did not mature to the point where they truly were ready to contend for a championship until this season.

"The flip side when you get into this is that as you gain that experience through some of the guys that you work with as a crew chief and learn from, they are veteran guys. You kind of lose a little aggression over time and everything becomes mechanical," Ford said.

"Denny coming in was a little more aggressive than what I was used to working with. I tamed him down, but he picked me up a little bit, also. So I think we both fed off of each other, and we're better today because of it, and I think we've got a good balance at times. He's not afraid to question me and I'm not afraid to question him -- because we know at the end of the day we're looking to accomplish the same thing."

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