DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — On Thursday, Denny Hamlin, crew chief Chris Gabehart and the No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing team were handed an L2-level penalty for an engine inspection infraction.
The penalty cost Hamlin and Gibbs 75 points in the drivers’ and owners’ points standings, respectively, all but wiping Hamlin from contention to win the Regular Season Championship. He was also docked 10 playoff points and Gabehart was fined $100,000, all after Toyota Racing Development mistakenly returned the No. 11 team’s race-winning engine from Bristol Motor Speedway to headquarters in Costa Mesa, California, where it was disassembled without first being inspected by NASCAR officials per the rule book.
On Friday, the team’s focus was set squarely on doing what it’s done all season: priming the No. 11 Toyota for a chance to win another NASCAR Cup Series race.
MORE: Cup standings | Details on penalty
“I mean, sure we’re all disappointed, every one of us — TRD, JGR, 11 car, all of our sponsors are really disappointed in the news,” Gabehart told NASCAR.com Friday at Daytona International Speedway. “But context is, at Bristol, we won with this engine. But as some may not realize, for process-savings measures, you run the engines more than once, and the engine was scheduled to run at a later date, and it did. And one thing led to another, and instead of ultimately ending up at NASCAR, it went back home to its home.”
Hamlin explained later Friday evening that particular engine was run at Darlington Raceway following the Bristol victory.
Now sitting sixth in the points standings as opposed to third, Hamlin was no less disappointed Friday at Daytona than when he had the news broken to him Thursday in a meeting by TRD and JGR leadership.
“It’s just really hard,” Hamlin said. “It’s really hard in this kind of format when you work so hard in the regular season to get all those bonus points. It’s really tough to see it just wiped away. But it’s part of it and we‘ve got to just overcome now.”
David Wilson, president of TRD USA, said in a Thursday statement, in part: “We have reviewed our processes and have implemented several additional steps to ensure that this never happens again. TRD takes full responsibility for this grievous mistake, and we apologize to Denny, Chris, Coach Gibbs, the entire JGR organization, NASCAR and our fans.”
As Wilson, Tyler Gibbs and others explained how everything unfolded to Hamlin, the driver of the No. 11 Toyota was left trying to wrap his head around the situation.
“Just had questions, you know?” Hamlin said. “Tried to get some clarification on exactly how, what, when, and all that stuff. But they obviously were very regrettable to have to give me that information when they did. I feel bad for them because I knew that they did not want to have to bring me in a room and tell me that we were going to have something that is going to affect our season.”
While a costly mistake, Gabehart sympathized with what led to the mistake in the first place.
“How it happens is simple. All of this is done by humans,” Gabehart said. “Like in any pro sport, when you turn on the TV or you go to the game and you watch such an amazing thing unfold so seemingly effortlessly, it doesn’t look human. It looks robotic, as does racing at the top level. Anybody who knows about details about what this garage area is capable of producing week in and week out, it’s superhuman. It’s every bit as superhuman as watching the NFL’s Super Bowl. It just is.
“But it’s done by humans, and humans aren’t perfect, and they make mistakes, and that’s what happened. I’ve made plenty of them that have cost the 11 car a win. Denny’s made plenty of them that have cost the 11 car a win. JGR, Toyota. I mean, we’re teammates. We all do it together, and it’s a really hard way to incur such a stiff penalty for sure, and none of us are going to take it lightly. I’m confident our partners at Toyota will not be taking it lightly, but at the end of the day, we’re humans and we’re not perfect.”
Hamlin echoed that sentiment, noting missteps of his own that have set the team back. But he also noted there is no time to sulk despite his negativity with just two events remaining in the regular season.
“I mean, you just gotta (look at it like) so what, now what?” Hamlin said. “I mean, you have to just figure out what’s the best path forward? And the best path is just to win, right? Win and just make sure you can finish races the best you can. And obviously our room for error is gone now. We‘ll just hope to get through the rounds.”
Hamlin sits 103 points back of 23XI Racing’s Tyler Reddick for the Regular Season Championship. There are 14 more playoff points available across the next two races (five per race win, one per stage win). Hamlin has finished inside the top 10 in three of the last four races and has led 21 or more laps in five of the last seven events.
“We’re gonna do the same thing we’ve been trying to do the first 24 races, and that’s win — and we’ve been more than capable to win a lot of them,” Gabehart said. “We’ll be more than capable of winning the next 12. So really, there is no refocus. … Quantifiably, the fact is, you win and you’re in. You win and then you advance in rounds. And there’s no one in this garage more capable of winning week in and week out than us — absolutely zero people — and this will be nothing but a little extra motivation to prove that.”
Hamlin is also a three-time winner at Daytona and a four-time victor at Darlington, making all 14 of those playoff points that much more attainable.
“If we can get hot and win some races, it won’t hurt as bad, right?” Hamlin said. “We could get back to a decent number for playoff points for the first round, second round, third round. But yeah, there’s always an opportunity, and certainly the tracks line up nicely for us.”
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