Denny Hamlin hasn’t had the same success on the racetrack of late as he did earlier in the season, but crew chief Chris Gabehart is still overall pleased with the team’s performance.
Gabehart, atop Hamlin’s pit box since 2019, told Kevin Harvick on his “Happy Hour” podcast this week that the 11 team is “executing at a really high level,” even if the recent results don’t exactly show it.
“For me, I have a stat that I keep up with that’s very subjective. But I’m very critical of and it’s where were we capable of running if everything went right,” Gabehart said. “And that’s a number I’m very critical of. I’ve kept up with it for five and a half years. And it is the all-encompassing single metric of how should we have done if everything went well. This race [New Hampshire] is the toughest. I’ve never dealt with conditions like this where for the first 220 laps it was X and then the last 80 laps it was Y. But the bottom line is I think we’re executing at a really high level.
“You go back to Charlotte. We had issues on pit road that were of our making when you look at qualifying. But other than that, we’re situational and still ended up top-five. Gateway, we ended up second. North Wilkesboro we ran really well, same thing at Iowa — we got through a really shaky first stage. I was really proud of how our team rebounded. And before we got wrecked, we were passing for sixth with a shot to run top-five.
Denny Hamlin looking to turn things around in second half of season
Hamlin started the season off hot, winning three of the first 11 races (Bristol, Richmond, Dover). Hamlin reeled off four consecutive top-five finishes after his victory at Dover but has stumbled in the three races that have followed. His engine blew up just two laps into the race at Sonoma, resulting in a season-worst P38 finish. Hamlin then recorded back-to-back P24 finishes at Iowa and New Hampshire.
Despite the disappointing run of results, there’s no concern in the No. 11 team at the midway point of the season.
“I think we’re executing at a really high level in terms of running capability. But as you mentioned, in the Gen 7 era now more than ever, mistakes just cannot be tolerated by the driver, by the team, by the circumstance on the racetrack,” Gabehart said. “Maybe it’s not even of your own doing, but if it drags you into it, it’s so hard to recover from. I think we’re right where we need to be and that we’re capable of really good days, we just gotta be able to execute them all the way out.”
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