Despite a win this season, Denny Hamlin is finding it hard to draw consistent performance in the opening quarter of the season.
The 12 races have produced 10 different winners, with Hamlin being one of them. For a driver of his caliber, it is a shame that he is the lower-standing driver who has a win. This fact speaks volumes about Hamlin’s season who only has one top-10 finish this season.
“Certainly we’ve just kind of had a rough year in general with stuff happening that is out of our control,” mused Hamlin. “And some stuff was in our control, but… We are definitely going through Next Gen car growing pains right now, that’s for sure.
“Some of it’s the new car, but some of it has just been mistakes we made as a team or getting caught up in other people’s wrecks and things that we can’t control also has really been the big factors in our performance.”
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His crew chief, Chris Gabehart, drawing some optimism from the situation, said that his team was “the most dangerous 22nd-place points team in the history of the sport”. Hamlin commented on his crew chief’s words, saying that they are a lot better than what the standings show.
“I certainly think that by no means are we a 22nd-place team,” said Hamlin, who led 42 laps at Darlington before it all went sideways. “That’s not even in the realm of where we are at or where we think we are. But right now, it is where we are at, so we’ve got to deal with it and we’ve got to fix the things that we’re messing up with and then hope that somehow the racing gods just finally give us a break, you know? That’s the biggest thing. We’re going to control what we can control and just hope that we don’t just eventually keep crapping out with every roll. Eventually things are going to start to go your way, and when they do, we’re going to win a lot of races.”
This is not the only bad situation that Hamlin has to deal with right now. His co-owned team, 23XI Racing, is likewise struggling to make any mark in the series, with neither team yet to register a top-10 finish this season.