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DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – Denny Hamlin knew he wanted Mike Wheeler to be his crew chief, and Wheeler knew he wanted to be Hamlin’s crew chief. But until the 2016 season, neither got their wish.
Now, after winning NASCAR’s season-opening Daytona 500 on Sunday, folks might be asking, ‘What took so long?’
Wheeler is Hamlin’s fourth crew chief in the Sprint Cup Series, taking over the helm of the Joe Gibbs Racing No. 11 team in late December of 2015. The move came only after Wheeler, previously the lead engineer for Hamlin, served a year toiling in the XFINITY Series, heading up the No. 20 entry for JGR. The two were close, even if it wasn’t Wheeler on the box calling the shots on race day at the Sprint Cup level.
Close enough that Hamlin practically promised Wheeler the job. A bit prematurely, it seems.
“I said, ‘Down the line we’re going to work together,'” Hamlin recounted after Sunday’s win. “I knew he had aspirations to be a crew chief in the Cup Series. You can only be a great engineer for so long before other teams are going to come knocking.
“(Team owner) Joe (Gibbs) gave him that opportunity in the XFINITY Series. Even though I probably premature promised him the job a little soon, you know, I was happy that Gibbs said, ‘Let’s just take you through the same process that all of our other crew chiefs had.’
“I’m glad he was only gone for a year.”
Hamlin scored his 27th victory here on Sunday. He’s won with each of the crew chiefs with whom he has worked – Mike Ford, Darian Grubb, Dave Rogers and now Wheeler.
“When Mike Ford left (after 2011) and Darian came on board, it was a big timeframe there that Darian didn’t know the JGR stuff,” Wheeler said Monday during the annual champions’ breakfast at Daytona International Speedway. “So they put me in more of that kind of a deal. I got to do more and I was happy with that because I felt like I could show what I could do. I think Denny saw that. And that was the same timeframe that he was like ‘OK, Wheels knows what he’s talking about and can run this team, but Darian is the leader.’
“Year after year, I wanted to become a crew chief, but I was happy being with Denny Hamlin and Joe Gibbs Racing and with Darian running the team, we were winning races and competing for championships. You couldnt ask for much more than that.”
“It’s a pretty good story,” team owner Joe Gibbs said. “Really and truly, that’s been in play for probably four years. He obviously was the lead engineer with Denny. Really what would happen is many times at the race track, my understanding was, Denny would talk to the crew chief but he also would turn and talk to Wheels. They developed this relationship.”
But Gibbs wanted Wheeler to season a bit before handing him the reins of a Sprint Cup team.
“I was thinking maybe two years or something because what you worry about with an engineer, now they take over all the people stuff when you become a crew chief,” Gibbs said. “Now you’ve got to work with a lot of people; the job requirements take on a different (look).
“We’d had such good fortune with Jason (Ratcliff) and Dave, having those guys go through XFINITY, so it took some talking. But really, he thought about it I think for his career, he wanted to be a crew chief, he said OK.”
Going to the XFINITY Series was a risk, Wheeler said, admitting, “I wasn’t excited about doing it.”
While it was a way to further prove himself, he said it was also possible to get “lost in the program.
“If you get subpar results with average drivers, that’s what happens sometimes, I know you can get lost in the mix. So I was kind of scared doing that. But I knew Denny would have my back.”
The experience and the feedback from other drivers convinced Gibbs that Wheeler was ready to move up.
“When you go down there … he gets to work with almost all the Cup drivers,” Gibbs explained. “When Matt (Kenseth) went down there for one of the very first races with him, Matt got out of the car and came and told me ‘That guy’s good.’
“He’s worked with Kyle (Busch), he’s worked with Denny. And when you go through that process trying to please those guys that know what’s going on, and you start getting feedback from them that ‘hey, this guy’s really good,’ it gave us real confidence. I think it was a good year for him.”
David Wilson, President and General Manager for Toyota Racing Development, USA, said Wheeler is “the perfect example” of how JGR uses the ladder system to bring talent to the Sprint Cup level.
“A lot of people look at things like the XFINITY Series as just the XFINITY Series, but it’s also a means to an end,” he said. “And the end is to build the strongest Cup team possible. So they invest in their people. They invest in these young engineers who demonstrate their commitment, their work ethic. You go down the list – Mike Wheeler, Dave Rogers, Jason Ratcliff. All of these young, talented engineers, they came up through the ranks, first as race engineers and if they prove their capability then they’ll give them a shot at the XFINITY level.
“It’s their first chance to really not just engineer the race cars but engineer the team, build the team. What’s neat about Wheels is he has graduated now; he’s been a great leader and I’m so happy for him because he’s put in the work, paid the dues, the blood, sweat and tears to achieve this level of success.”
That he and Hamlin have similar backgrounds, are close in age and came into the series at roughly the same time helped build the foundation of their current relationship, Wheeler said.
“We grew up together,” he said. “(Denny) just came in in the same timeframe, we were both mid-20s and in a sport that had a lot of older people at the time so it was very easy to become buds.
“I don’t know if it’s who I am versus who he is or just a good solid match. But we have that mutual respect. He’s trusted my judgment for a long time now.”