“This is our year.”
“No really, this is going to be our year.”
“I’m calling it now, we’re going to win Dover.”
We’ll all collectively see about his other predictions, but Denny Hamlin absolutely called his shot earlier in the week on his Actions Detrimental podcast in predicting that his Joe Gibbs Racing No. 11 team would win this weekend.
What do you know, he called it.
“I think we did it back in 2012, as well, at New Hampshire,” Hamlin said. “We mentioned that we were going to win that week. I felt pretty confident of it. You better win if you’re going to open your mouth, that’s for sure.
“Certainly, the way the race was starting to play out at the end, I (told myself) you can’t give up the lead at this point after I said that. Hopefully some listeners of Actions Detrimental maybe cashed in on today.”
His prognostication abilities aside, calling your shot like this is the byproduct of a guy that is absolutely feeling himself while having conviction in all facets of his team. Hamlin absolutely should be feeling himself having won three times across the first 11 starts of the season, and that doesn’t even count the preseason Clash at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.
Hamlin has always been a top-10 driver at the highest level, consistently from Day One now 20 years ago, but Chris Gabehart has really transformed his program since 2019 across two generation of car. Hamlin is at the top of his game as a driver and he credits his crew chief for his part too.
“He continues to challenge me and push me to get better,” Hamlin said. “He holds me accountable. I hold him accountable. We’re year five now of working together and we just keep getting better. We’re starting to understand each other a little more. We kind of know where our deficits are and where we need to work to win more races.
“If you would have asked me six, seven years ago winning at Dover, I would have said you’re crazy. It was by far my worst track. I just hated coming here each and every time. He led me in a direction to get better. Really paid off over those last five years.”
Listen to them on the radio on any given week and you hear candid discourse, the occasional disagreement but a tremendous amount of respect for what each provides to the equation.
For example, when Hamlin first took the lead from the bottom on a Lap 329 restart, he wanted the non-preferred lane again as the control car. Gabehart mulled it over for what seemed like forever, spotter Chris Lambert even filled the dead air for a moment, before the interjection came.
He offered a rebuttal, and Hamlin went with what his crew chief suggested instead.
Their relationship begins with honesty, trust and respect.
“I just start with being genuine and telling the truth,” Gabehart said. “I think that’s always a great foundation for anything — being genuine and speaking the truth.
“Everything I tell him I believe. I’m doing the best I can for the 11 car at any given moment, any given hour, any given day, any given week. You have to prove yourself to someone as decorated as Denny’s career had been when I found him in 2019.
“I think we’ve spent a lot of years together now proving ourselves to each other. I think he trusts that when I say something, I mean it, and I have the best of intentions in mind, and vice versa. We work at a high level professionally because of that.”
This is our year has kind of become a running joke for Hamlin, even if it’s one rooted in deep conviction of their potential, after coming up short of the final four season after season.
This is their year in the same way that fans of the Chicago Cubs said it for over a century before breaking through in 2016.
Before it can be their year, winning the championship, the 11 team has to reach the championship and Gabehart says they are counting their laurels even after a blistering successful start to the spring.
“Fortunately, I’ve been in this position before where our team is on a roll, we’re kind of dominating the season at a point like us (and Kevin Harvick) did in 2020 for the middle part of the season — it was the 11 or the 4 every week.
“I can tell you how that ended. The 4 did not make the (championship race) and the 11 almost did not.
“I know Coach (Joe Gibbs) has been a part of so many of these situations where when you’re on top of a sport’s given level (and) everyone is shooting at you. None of these teams are happy about it. They’re all working their guts out to try to get there.
“I want it to last forever. We will work our guts out to make sure it does. We’ve had a great run in this 11 team over the years. But this is not permanent. It will end at some point. We’re just going to work every week to keep it from ending.”
With that said, if Hamlin has any more predictions for Kansas Speedway this weekend, his fans and the industry will have to tune into Actions Detrimental again on Monday morning.
“I expect to win every week,” Hamlin said. “There’s no reason I shouldn’t expect to win. So, I think I’ll focus on it tomorrow, but it’s been on the radar for a while.
“This little stretch right here right before the All-Star break, between Dover, Kansas, Darlington, I mean, these are all kind of right in my wheelhouse. Certainly feel pretty good about it.”
That’s the sort of thing you said when you believe it’s my year … end result to be decided.
Matt Weaver is a Motorsports Insider for Sportsnaut. Follow him on Twitter.
