Joe Gibbs Racing's Denny Hamlin says he can dethrone Jimmie Johnson
Joe Gibbs Racing's Denny Hamlin finished the 2009 NASCAR Sprint Cup season with a career-high four victories. // David Griffin, NASCAR Scene
Like a bullet train screaming down the tracks, Jimmie Johnson has met little resistance from his competitors in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series.
Try as they might, no one seems ready to take on Johnson and the No. 48 team. Johnson has no real rivals and has out-performed everyone to the extent that his most serious threat this season finished 141 points behind.
With all the momentum that a dominating four-year stretch of championships has brought, few drivers appear ready to knock Johnson from his perch atop the NASCAR world.
Enter Denny Hamlin.
Hamlin, the 29-year-old Virginian, proclaimed his No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing team ready to dethrone Johnson. Soon.
“We can, for sure,” he said. “Our team can do it.”
Those words weren’t spoken in some moment of bravado after Hamlin won the season finale at Homestead. Hamlin said them prior to the Texas race, just before he ended the season by finishing second, third and first in the final three races of the Chase For The Sprint Cup.
In victory lane at Homestead, Hamlin had only grown more confident.
“I promise you, the next couple of years we’re going to win a championship,” he said.
Where did this Hamlin come from? He spoke like a man who knows something everyone else doesn’t, not like a guy trying to convince himself with false hope.
His brief journey in NASCAR has already had its ups and downs.
Hamlin finished third in points in his first full Cup season and looked like the sport’s next phenom, but he fell to 12th and eighth the next two years. Entering 2009, he had underachieved by his initial standards, with just four Cup victories to his credit.
The first half of this year seemed like more of the same – consistent results and top-10 finishes but nothing spectacular.
Then, over the final 16 races of the season, something clicked. Beginning at the second Pocono race, he won four times – as many as Johnson during that stretch – and had nine top-five finishes, which were two more than Johnson had.
Just like that, Hamlin won as many races in 16 weeks as he had during his entire Cup career.
So it’s no wonder that Hamlin is serious about being the No. 1 contender to end the Johnson Supremacy.
“I think this Chase has just made us stronger, because now I think everyone is focused and everyone is fired up about next year, knowing that we're one of the few guys that can run with that 48 every single week,” Hamlin said.
No one else has even dared to speak those words. Perhaps it’s because they can’t back them up. Even if Hamlin can, Johnson’s teammate Jeff Gordon wasn’t sure it was wise to make statements challenging the 48 team.
“I think Denny is a really solid driver – I hope he's not putting too much pressure on himself by saying that,” Gordon said. “I'm always big on ‘Actions speak louder than words,’ so I certainly wouldn't go about saying that. But good for him.”
Hamlin put himself on the contenders’ radar this season by declaring after his Richmond victory just prior to the Chase that he was perhaps the driver to beat. It didn’t work out that way, thanks to two engine failures and a crash in California, but the rest of the performances were encouraging.
“In years past, it’s always been, ‘Well, we’ve just been outperformed by those guys each and every week of the Chase,’” Hamlin said. “This Chase, I don’t feel like that is the case. I’m more optimistic about next year than I am sorry for myself about this year.”
Hamlin even went so far as to predict next year would be his winningest season yet, apparently unafraid that other drivers have been burned by such statements.
“If we get our mechanical stuff figured out, if I don’t win five or six races next year, I’ll be pretty disappointed,” he said.
So is Hamlin nuts or is he onto something?
Crew chief Mike Ford shared the optimism that next year could be something big.
“I think if you look back, we've been toe to toe with [Johnson] every Chase race other than Dover,” when the team missed the setup, Ford said.
Part of the change has to do with Hamlin’s increased leadership role in the team since Tony Stewart left JGR to head his own organization. Hamlin committed himself to taking control – working on his physical fitness, asking the team to build cars more to his liking, telling owner Joe Gibbs that “mandatory meetings” about competition should be enacted.
“There’s things we need to do to make our team better, and we’re going to start taking those steps as soon as the season is over,” Hamlin said. “I’m going to be in that shop. I’m going to be talking about things we need to work on constantly for next season.
“That's what got us to this point, is having our meetings and figuring out what we need to work on and getting all of the drivers on the same page and crew chiefs on the same page. … Now we’ve got to do that in the offseason, because that’s when you need to make your biggest jumps.”
All that being said, Johnson’s average Chase finish in the nine races where he didn’t have trouble was 3.3; Hamlin, in the seven races in which he did not have problems, had an average result of 5.1.
So maybe it’s not time for Johnson to start shaking in his seat just yet.
But if Hamlin has his way, Johnson should at least take a peek in his rear-view mirror.
