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Denny Hamlin enters the NASCAR Sprint Cup season with his third crew chief in three years, the result of a second straight go-round of offseason shuffling at Joe Gibbs Racing.
Before last season, Dave Rogers replaced Darian Grubb, who left the No. 11 Toyota team to become Carl Edwards' crew chief. This offseason, Mike Wheeler was promoted to replace Rogers, who followed form, leaving the No. 11 to become Edwards' crew chief.
This time, Hamlin's certain he has his go-to guy.
"Carl can't have this one," Hamlin said with a laugh during last week's Charlotte Motor Speedway Media Tour. "That's how I'm confident."
Joking aside, Hamlin said he always knew he'd one day be paired with his longtime lead engineer, making what the driver called a "handshake deal" long ago. With Wheeler now headed toward his first full season as a Sprint Cup crew chief after making strides in the NASCAR XFINITY Series, the two have come full circle.
"He's been with me in some capacity throughout my career, so he's my guy," Hamlin said. "He's going to be my guy until I retire, there's no doubt about that. This is what we've built towards, this has been in the workings for a very, very long time. From our standpoint, I thought that he'd be in XFINITY a little bit longer, but when he chose to move up, obviously I didn't want to loan him to anybody else for another year so we made the switch. I think that it's good for me. Everyone's kind of got who they want now and everything should be good."
Wheeler has just six Sprint Cup races atop the pit box, serving as interim crew chief for Hamlin during Grubb's suspension for a technical infraction in 2014. The No. 11 team finished in the top 10 in half those races before Grubb returned to lead Hamlin to the championship round in the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup playoffs.
Wheeler dipped down to the XFINITY Series last season, adeptly calling the shots for a rotation of eight different drivers -- including Hamlin. The result was a stellar campaign for the No. 20 team, which netted four victories and eight pole positions. Hamlin accounted for three of those wins and four of those poles.
When the time came for team owner Joe Gibbs to make changes to keep up with the competition, the venerable coach followed a similar pattern of promoting from within. It paid huge dividends last year with former XFINITY crew chief Adam Stevens lifting Kyle Busch to his first Sprint Cup crown.
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"The wild thing now is all four of our Cup guys came from XFINITY for us," Gibbs said of his organization's crew chief lineup. "I think what happens there is our Cup guys get to work with them, racing XFINITY, and they develop that relationship. That's like Adam and Kyle. I think Wheels has always gotten along great with Denny. They've always kind of wanted to be together, and so Wheels was willing to go back down to XFINITY last year and did a great job for us down there. We kind of felt like it was a natural deal."
Contending for championships has also come naturally for Hamlin, but despite numerous close calls, his title cupboard remains bare. Last year may have been the flukiest near-miss of all, when a faulty roof hatch -- and later, a crash in a green-white-checkered restart -- stemmed his progress at an elimination race at Talladega Superspeedway.
Hamlin has won at least one race in each of his 10 full seasons in NASCAR's premier series. The goose egg in the championship column? Hamlin said he thought that void would have been filled long ago.
"Oh, no doubt. I thought I'd have one within the first three years of my Cup career and just things didn't work out for whatever reason," Hamlin said. "And I look back at all the Chases that I've been part of and it comes down to I'm still in it with one race, two races to go and it's just something bananas happens and it takes me out. Eventually, that wave has got to turn in your favor."
Hamlin hopes Wheeler is a part of that wave, one that includes a welcome return to crew chief stability. Hamlin also hopes for continuity in JGR's recent upswing, which produced 14 Sprint Cup wins, a championship from Busch, and Chase eligibility for all four of its drivers last season.
"It's as good as it can get," Hamlin said. "I mean, we all work really, really well together. All the drivers have great chemistry, the crew chiefs have great chemistry. There's just no reason why we can't duplicate the same amount of wins and a championship for JGR, so really there's nothing standing in our way with that."