Shortly after Denny Hamlin exited his car on pit road last weekend at Homestead-Miami Speedway, crew chief Chris Gabehart put his arm around the future Hall of Famer, consoling and motivating him.
“I just wanted to grab him and tell him how proud of him I was,” Gabehart said of what he told Hamlin in that moment. “Pretty point-blank simple.
“And then pivot. Hell with this, it’s over with. We’re moving on. It’s time to go get me a (grandfather) clock. We’ve done everything but win a clock at (Martinsville) together.”
A season that looked as if it finally could be the year Hamlin wins his first Cup championship now could see him eliminated Sunday at Martinsville Speedway — a track where he has scored five victories but none since 2015.
“I pretty much got to go win,” Hamlin said last weekend after exiting the care center at Homestead.
He enters Martinsville tied with teammate Martin Truex Jr. at 17 points below the cutline. Also below the cutline is Tyler Reddick (-10 points) and Chris Buescher (-43). Ryan Blaney holds the final transfer spot to next week’s championship race at Phoenix.
Each of the last three years a driver below the cutline entering the Martinsville elimination race advanced.
Chase Elliott, who was 25 points down, won in 2020 and then went on to win the title at Phoenix. Truex entered Martinsville three points down in 2021 and scored enough points to knock Kyle Busch out of a transfer spot. Last year, Christopher Bell was 33 points below the cutline and won at the historic half-mile track.
Hamlin, who has 51 career Cup victories, seeks his fifth appearance in the championship race. He’s outside a transfer spot after a 10th-place finish at Las Vegas to open the Round of 8 and 30th-place result last week at Homestead.
“You know if you have one bad race, especially in the Round of 8, you’re cooked and what you did for the first 35 races just doesn’t matter,” Hamlin said last week.
Hamlin is in this position after he hit the wall while running third with 32 laps to go at Homestead.
“It looks like we had a power steering failure during the downshift,” Gabehart said Thursday. “So, he only had one hand on the wheel (while) instantaneously losing power steering. The effort required then to turn the wheel ripped it out of his hands and lost trajectory.”
Add that to the misfortune Hamlin has faced in the playoffs through the years.
In 2014, Hamlin led the championship race when the caution came out for a wreck. Kevin Harvick passed him for the lead on the restart and led the final eight laps to win the crown.
In 2015, Hamlin entered Talladega, the cutoff race in the Round of 12, in second place. A latch with his roof hatch broke and NASCAR ordered him to pit to fix it. The first attempt failed and he had to pit again. He was later collected in a crash on the final restart and eliminated from title contention.
In 2019, Hamlin won six races but saw his title hopes end in the season finale at Homestead when Gabehart called for a large piece of tape to be put on the front of the car during a pit stop with 58 laps to go. The tape was to help with the car’s handling. But the tape blocked too much air to the engine, which began to overheat. Hamlin returned to pit road 12 laps later to remove the tape, ending his chance at the championship.
In 2021, Kyle Larson, who entered the pits fourth, beat Denny Hamlin off pit road on the final stop. Larson pulled away on the restart to win the title race at Phoenix. “Honestly, there’s just nothing else I could have done,” Hamlin said that day. “There’s nothing else. I drove as hard as I could every lap.”
Last year, Hamlin was set to advance to the championship race until Ross Chastain’s “Hail Melon” run along the wall in Turns 3 and 4 on the last lap at Martinsville allowed Chastain to leapfrog Hamlin for the final transfer spot.
That move has been outlawed so Hamlin knows he won’t be beat by it again.
Now comes Sunday (2 p.m. ET on NBC) and the question is what will happen next to Hamlin? Or will this be his year?
“It’s always my year,” he said before the playoffs began.
2. Martin Truex Jr.'s team looking for answers
Little has gone right in the playoffs for Martin Truex Jr., the regular-season champion who faces elimination Sunday.
He and his team narrowly avoided elimination in the first two rounds. Can it happen a third time?
Before the Round of 8 began, crew chief James Small told NBC Sports: “In 2017, we had the best average finish in the playoffs (at 4.3), maybe we can (win the title) with the worst.”
Truex goes into Sunday’s race with an average finish of 20.8 in these playoffs. He has one finish better than 17th in the first eight playoff races.
Truex and Small have a unique relationship on the radio, going back and forth at times when things aren’t going well. While it can create the image of issues between the two, Small says that’s not the case.
“He reiterated to (team owner Joe Gibbs) … don’t listen to anything I say on the radio,” Small said of Truex.
“He has been there, frustrated, hot as hell, stuff isn’t going right and you would think talking to him on Monday he was a different person. In his mind, we had a car capable of winning and he was just cruising around waiting for the end to start using up the wall in (Turns) 3 and 4 (at Homestead).
“Someone asked me before if I want to yell back at him and I’m like, yeah, all the time, but I’ve realized that doesn’t get me anywhere.”
Truex is 17 points below the cutline after finishing 29th at Homestead when his engine failed. It was the first engine failure for Toyota this season.
“It’s just been a very weird playoffs,” Small said of a postseason that has seen Truex crash after a cut tire at the start of the Kansas race, wrecked after a stage ended at Texas, and have the engine failure last weekend.
“It feels very much like the stuff we went through last year. You name it, something went wrong, but we’re still in it with a shot and that’s how we get up every day.”
This week, the team will have a different look. After struggling on pit road, Truex will have two new pit crew members at Martinsville.
Kevon Jackson replaces Danny Olszowy as the rear tire changer. Caleb Dirks replaces Kellen Mills as the jackman for the No. 19 car.
Jackson started the year on Christopher Bell’s car. When the playoffs started, Joe Gibbs Racing moved the pit crew from Ty Gibbs’ team to Bell’s team because the crew with Ty Gibbs had been among the best all season. Now, Jackson moves to this third team within JGR this season. Olszowy goes to Ty Gibbs’ team.
JGR also supplies a pit crew to the Front Row Motorsports team of Michael McDowell. Dirks had been there. While he goes to Truex’s team, Mills moves to McDowell’s team.
3. Inconsistency reigns in playoffs
The Championship 4 could be a matchup of teams that overcome flaws to race for a title.
The second year of the Next Gen car has seen a sense of normalcy return in the number of winners after last year had a record-tying 19 different drivers win races. This year, the total is 15.
Kyle Larson, who secured a spot in the title race with his Las Vegas win, has been fast. He’s won four races but also has failed to finish eight times this season. Only Austin Dillon has failed to finish more races than Larson this year at 10. Part of Larson’s issues have been wrong place at the wrong time. He’s been eliminated by a crash in four of the drafting races this season.
“Even when we had the DNFs or the 30th-place finishes, typically that came from running in the top five,” crew chief Cliff Daniels said early in the playoffs. “So it gets very discouraging by the time you’re on your second or your third wave or cycle of the up and the down, and so we’ve had to very much call it like it is.
“I certainly made a few mistakes calling races this year. He’s made mistakes behind the wheel. Our pit crew has made mistakes on pit road, on and on and on. We’ve had to find the right ownership in that of how to hold each other accountable and still build and learn from that and kind of group ourselves together tighter through that.”
Bell’s season also has had its challenges. A big issue was pit road, leading to Joe Gibbs Racing replacing Bell’s pit crew at the start of the playoffs.
Last weekend, it was the car that was the problem. Bell fell nearly a lap behind in the second stage before winning at Homestead to advance to the title race. As crew chief Adam Stevens informed Bell about how close the leader was approaching, Bell snapped, saying he would start trying harder.
“I apologized to Adam for that. His old drivers probably gave him a lot worse, so I shouldn’t feel too bad,” Bell said, smiling, in a reference to Stevens’ former driver, Kyle Busch.
Blaney enters Martinsville holding the final transfer spot by 10 points. It has been trying season, as Fords have struggled much of this year.
“I think the biggest challenge this year has just been trying to find speed,” Blaney said. “It’s kind of eluded us a little bit, especially in the summer months leading up to the playoffs. We’ve done a fantastic job here the last eight weeks of finding some good speed to where we’ve been able to run up front and get stage points, lead laps and stuff like that – especially the last two weeks.”
Byron, holds the other transfer spot. He’s 30 points ahead of the first driver below the cutline. Byron is the only driver remaining who has had a relatively smooth playoffs. He goes into Martinsville having scored six consecutive top 10s. The next best streak is four top 10s in a row by Hamlin earlier in the playoffs.
Hamlin, who continues to seek his first championship, has had issues crop up. He opened the playoffs by having to pit for a loose wheel at Darlington just after he had pitted from the lead. He finished 25th. Hamlin was caught speeding on pit road at Bristol while running second. He rallied to win.
His teammate, Martin Truex Jr., hasn’t been as fortunate. After winning the regular season championship, Truex and the No. 19 team have had several poor results.
Some of it has been self-inflected, such as crew chief James Small’s decision to stay out after the end of the first stage at Las Vegas, while other issues have been simple misfortune.
For a good part of the regular season, 23XI Racing struggled with execution with both its teams. It has been better in the playoffs for Tyler Reddick, but he still is 10 points below the cutline. That’s better than Chris Buescher, who is last in the playoff standings, 43 points from the cutline and not shown the speed he had when he won three races during the regular season.
4. Setting the Xfinity title field
Sam Mayer is the only driver who has secured a spot in next week’s championship race at Phoenix after his win at Homestead. That victory was his fourth in the last 12 races.
“That’s a heck of a confidence booster,” Mayer said after hearing that stat last weekend. “ … We struggled earlier in the year and we acknowledged that. Our race cars have gotten a lot better. I’ve gotten better as a driver. I’ve learned a lot more good and bad. It’s kind of pushed us to this point in the season where we’re really coming on at the right time.”
Saturday’s Xfinity race at Martinsville (3:30 p.m. ET on USA Network) will finalize the title field.
John Hunter Nemechek is 44 points above the first driver outside a transfer spot and is in a good position to advance. That would leave two spots.
Cole Custer and Austin Hill each are three points ahead of Justin Allgaier, the first driver outside a transfer spot. Also below the cutline are Sammy Smith (-49 points), Chandler Smith (-54) and Sheldon Creed (-65).
5. One more week
The start-and-stop schedule for the Craftsman Truck Series has created a unique situation for Corey Heim.
His victory at Bristol on Sept. 14 secured a spot in the Truck title race, which will be 50 days after that win.
This is the second year in a row that the Round of 8 in the Truck playoffs does not include Martinsville and has a gap of several weeks from the start of the round to the title race.
That will change next year. Martinsville will be the elimination race in the Round of 8.
The round also will be condensed. The opening race of the Round of 8 next year for the Truck Series will be Oct. 4 at Talladega. The rest of the round includes Homestead (Oct. 26) and Martinsville (Nov. 1). The title race is Nov. 8 at Phoenix — that is only 35 days after the Round of 8 opening race at Talladega.
So what is a driver to do with 50 days to prepare for the championship race, as Heim has this year?
“I feel like the last five or six weeks have been really good for me,” he said. “Phoenix isn’t particularly my greatest track that I’ve been to. Fortunately, I do have experience there – I have a couple of ARCA races under my belt that I’m able to look back and see what I could have done better in those races to apply to this race.”
Heim, the regular-season champion this year, said he’s used to such gaps between races, having run a partial schedule in the series the past two years.
“I don’t personally believe in overpreparing,” he said. “I think you can overthink it, but you can’t overprepare. I’ve really been focused on preparing the right way and using sim times with Toyota Racing to the best of my abilities, and … I’m really confident I’m prepared for Phoenix.”
