DENNY HAMLIN, No. 11 FedEx Office Toyota Camry, Joe Gibbs Racing
What’s your outlook for the remainder of the season and the Chase?
“We’re in a decent spot. Not a great spot. Obviously, last week kind of let one slip away a little bit there. Still had a decent showing and we go to a track here were we ran really good in the spring. Even though the finish don’t show it — we led some laps here and was pretty competitive. Looking forward to that. All these tracks, obviously, have been good for us. Still we’ve got to keep just grinding away and keep getting good finishes every week and when you can try to take advantage and get a win — you’ll do that.”
Will you touch base with Michael Waltrip Racing regarding qualifying after they were fast in practice?
“We can ask them — I doubt they’ll tell us. We work well with those guys at MWR with various things and the crew chiefs talk a lot and there’s a good relationship there, but overall I don’t think there’s any setups exchanged or anything like that. We’re not quite at that level yet. It’s encouraging to see that our cars are capable — or the motors are capable of running that type of speed — which is good. We’ve shown it in qualifying quite a bit. I think the high RPM helps us. Overall, just going to keep working on it. We were decent in race trim today. But, it’s still too early to kind of tell where we really need to be. The guys that qualify up front aren’t necessarily the guys that are going to be racing for the win either. So, you’ve got to take it with a grain of salt.”
How is this Chase format for you as a driver?
“It’s a fine balance. This format was I think put together for the fans. If it was drivers — we’d base it off of a 36 week year. We want the entire year to be a part of the picture. It’s a green-white-checkered (flag) every three races for the race fans. Anything can happen. This is — you know we keep resetting points and things like that — and obviously this year has really helped us make it through and keep giving us a shot at a championship. But, when you have a short season — three race season like that — you allow the possibility of some of your guys that have dominated the entire year having one bad race and then not being part of the championship. I don’t know if it’s what the fans wanted, but it’s what the fans have got. Really, it’s been pretty exciting. It should be exciting from the fan’s standpoint. The last lap at Talladega — it was who was in, who is out. And I’m sure Phoenix will be the same. It will be exciting, but it is tough to say we would want it this way if we had to choose.”
Were you surprised to not be in the top-four after an eighth-place finish last week and will that standard continue?
“It will continue. I think the top-eight in points are the guys that are in the Chase still that continue to get faster. Not only that, but it seems like the guys on the race track give the Chase guys a little bit more of a break here and there. We just see it as the season winds down — the guys that are part of the championship continue to run up front more and more and push themselves more separate from the field every single week. We saw it with Tony (Stewart) and Carl (Edwards) in 2011, or whatever year that was. It will continue that trend and you’re going to have to run top-five at each one of these last weeks. We will — if we’re going to make it in on points — if we’re not going to win.”
How big of threat is Jeff Gordon to claim the championship?
“They’ve show the speed to definitely make it all the way to Homestead and have a shot to win that race. He’s got the most experience, for sure. I think, way back in the day, it used to be fans either loved him or hated him. Now, I think most people like Jeff because he’s the veteran and he’s the name that they recognize. But, overall, I think that anyone’s got a fair shot at this, but they’ve obviously show the speed week and week out to separate themselves as one of those true favorites after last weekend.”
Do you have any point total in mind that you’d like to have following Texas?
“For me, I think I would go into Phoenix comfortable if I ran top-three here. If not, of course, a win. Forgetting that part of it, but a top-three here I think would be good for us knowing that we could to Phoenix and have probably a top-eight to nine day and make it on points. But, who knows? If it’s one of these Chasers that wins the race — you continue to eliminate more and more on points. I definitely would be satisfied with a top-three day and we could move on from there.”
Have you noticed more intensity in the Chase and is it because teams and drivers don’t want to go into that third race needing a ‘Hail Mary’?
“What happens in the third race is totally dictated by what happened in the first two, and all the intensity that you’ve seen on some of these cutoff races is because some guys have had some issues the first one to two races of this cutoff, and we did the same thing. Luckily, the bad race we’ve had so far in the Chase was New Hampshire where there were 16 guys — so the others kind of eliminated themselves with me. In this format, if you have a bad race you have to win one of the other races. You just can’t have a bad race and think that the other six or seven are going to have a bad week as well. Just not in a three-race season. There’s going to be at least four guys that are going to have solid finishes throughout the entire three races and not have issues. As this keeps getting cut off the intensity is higher and people get frustrated more because they know that their entire season comes down to one flat tire, or one wreck in one race, so we become frustrated by that.”
If you’re one of the four going into Homestead — What would you do differently this year than what you did in 2010?
“It was a lot different then — than now. Now, I think you have to go the mentality of you have to win that final race to be a champion, but every team has that aspiration when they leave the race shop every week, but some know it’s more realistic than others. I feel like if you are part of that championship four now — you have to know that you can win if you want to win a championship. In 2010 we went in with a fairly minimal lead. I think we had to finish within three spots of Jimmie (Johnson) that weekend. We just had a bad weekend overall and for some reason I just never felt it that entire weekend. None of the days just felt right at all. It wasn’t nerves or anything, some days you feel it and some days you don’t. For whatever reason we’ve gotten so far now in this year’s Chase that I feel like the expectations aren’t set as high as they were in 2010. We had won so many races that year that everyone expected us to go out there and win. I feel like now we’re kind of on that house money-type thing where people aren’t expecting us to be here. Everywhere we go from here on out is a bonus and I feel like we’ve had an off-year with our race team and our cars. Everything has been not nearly as stellar as it was in 2010 so if we can somehow pull off an upset this year it will be way more gratifying than if we won in 2010 — where we kind of dominated and won all the races.”
