Denny Hamlin won the season-opening Daytona 500 and the Joe Gibbs Racing driver has been going like gangbusters ever since.
Which isn’t necessarily a good thing.
Hamlin has been flagged six times this year for excessive speed on pit road. Toss in a couple of tire violations and most recently an improper fueling mishap at Dover on Sunday and it appears Hamlin and the No. 11 FedEx team are their own worst enemy.
Even on those occasions when they don’t have a problem, they seem to have a problem.
“We’re up to nine now, which is a pretty big number, through all the races,” Hamlin said Monday during a conference call with media. “Even this weekend (at Dover), we pitted twice under green and both times we got caught by a caution and that was a total of three laps down that we went, two laps once and one lap the next. It’s just too hard to overcome it.”
Teammate Matt Kenseth finally broke into the winner’s circle this past weekend, while Kyle Busch has three wins and Carl Edwards has two wins. All of which leads Hamlin, 13th in points, to acknowledge that “our results don’t look nearly as good as our teammates by any means.”
Busch is currently second in points, Edwards fourth and Sunday’s win moved Kenseth from 14th to 12th.
Pit road violations such as speeding result in a trip to the tail end of the line if the incident occurs under yellow flag conditions, or a return trip down pit road if it takes place under green.
“A lot of it is just hurting ourselves by having to go to the back of the pack so many times through the race,” Hamlin said. “We just need to have a smooth race; we’re going to get it together eventually. It’s taken a little bit of time. I’m very confident that by the time we get to the next month or two we’re going to have some of these bugs worked out and we’ll be contending for wins like our teammates are.”
Hamlin will attempt to become just the third driver to win back-to-back Sprint All-Star Race events when NASCAR’s Sprint Cup Series teams arrive at Charlotte Motor Speedway for this weekend’s non-points event (Saturday, 9 p.m. ET, FS1, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
The 113-lap race, which will be consist of two 50-lap segments followed by a 13-lap final segment, will be the first since NASCAR announced changes to the current rules package in an effort to lessen downforce and side force.
“I think it’s just kind of an effort to keep going down the path that we started this year of taking downforce away,” Hamlin said. “Most of these changes are going to take side force away, which to a fan may not mean much, but it’s all really an effort to take the center of the corner speed down.
“Ultimately we can take more chances when the speeds are down and the person in front of us is lifting off the throttle. It allows us to carry it in there, similar to like I did in Kansas. It gave me the opportunity to make a move. It may work, it may not.
“It didn’t in my case, but at least gave me the chance.”