SEASON PREVIEW: Joe Gibbs Racing's Denny Hamlin not lacking confidence heading into 2010
Denny Hamlin says he has as much talent as anyone in the Sprint Cup Series. // Archives, NASCAR Illustrated
From a talent standpoint, Denny Hamlin says, “I feel like I’m as good as anyone on the race track.”
But driver talent being just one part of the puzzle that determines winners and losers in NASCAR’s Sprint Cup Series, Hamlin knows that he can’t carry the Joe Gibbs Racing No. 11 Toyota team to the championship in 2010 by himself. Just as the team knows that a fast race car is worthless without the right guy holding the steering wheel. Toss in the assorted parts and pieces, the fortunate break, the unfortunate penalty, and winning races and contending for championships becomes a pretty difficult proposition.
Hamlin, 29, knows because he’s been there, in the thick of the battle. Close, but never coming out on top. Most recently, he was poised to make a run at Hendrick Motorsports teammates Jimmie Johnson, Mark Martin and Jeff Gordon in 2009. But a couple of blown engines and a bad decision or two and, poof! Just like that, Hamlin’s title hopes were gone.
He eventually finished fifth in the point standings, thanks to a pair of wins and four top-five finishes in the last five races of the Chase For The Sprint Cup.
“Ultimately, it takes a lot of pieces of a puzzle to make a championship run,” Hamlin says. “The driver’s skill levels are probably 15 to 20 percent of it. So, there’s only so much I can help, but I think my team is better prepared this year. We learned a lot from how we ran our race team last year and started to peak at the right time. Those are some things that are very valuable to our race team [and] you’re going to see the same characteristics this year.”
Despite suffering a torn anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee during the off season, Hamlin says he’s ready to get the 2010 season started. He’ll delay surgery until after the season, and says the injury shouldn’t hamper his efforts in the car. In the meantime, he expects to take what he’s gleaned during his five full seasons on the Cup level and continue to improve as a competitor.
“You’ve just got to learn,” he says. “That’s the biggest thing. I watch a lot of race teams and learn and try to figure out what it takes. Once you think you have it figured out here in the Cup Series is when you stop going forward. And for me the biggest thing I think that’s made me better over the last few years is when I make a mistake I learn from it and try not to make that mistake again.”
Crew chief Mike Ford has been alongside Hamlin from the beginning. And the key for 2010, he says, is “no mistakes.” Especially when the Chase arrives.
“I think we proved through the course of the second half of the season, if you break it down and look at performance on a week-to-week basis, we out-performed [Johnson’s team]. When the end of the day came, we had a better shot. They had a couple more race wins, but consistently, we were top-three, top-five every week. We put very fast race cars out there.
“What we’ve got to focus on is no mistakes in the Chase. You can always second-guess [yourself], but the performance, in my eyes, was where it needed to be to win a championship. The mistakes were way too high. We have to eliminate that.”
Of course, Hamlin – and everyone else for that matter – still has a long way to go before they can start plotting Chase strategy. If Hamlin can duplicate his 2009 efforts, when he doubled his previous win output, that shouldn’t be a problem.
For Ford, keeping mistakes to a minimum, and performance at a maximum level, will continue to be a balancing act.
“You have to ask yourself what is important,” Ford says. “Safety is most important. Reliability is second; then it’s performance, cost and personal preference. That’s basically the structure for making decisions in this sport.
“We look at safety first and then we go straight to performance; we’re guilty of that because we’re competitors. We have to have a much higher awareness of No. 2 on the list, which is durability. If we run parts to failure, we know when they fail, we need to back it up a little bit, give ourselves a little more margin [for error]. Plus, we need to make sure the guys that touch things are educated and have what they need to work.
“We need to give ourselves an insurance policy, and as with any insurance policy, there’s a premium you have to pay.”
THE HAMLIN FILE
• Career Cup victories: 8
• Career Cup top-10s: 79
• Career Cup starts: 151
• Laps led: 3,495
• Best track: Martinsville (7.2 avg. fin.)
• Worst track: Dover (25.1 avg. fin.)
• Did You Know: Denny Hamlin became the first rookie to qualify for the Chase (2006), making the elite field during his first season with Joe Gibbs Racing.
Coming Monday: Mark Martin
