Hamlin, crew chief willing to take chances
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. - Joe Gibbs Racing's Denny Hamlin isn't planning to just sit back and ride his second-place standing into the Chase For The Nextel Cup.
In the coming weeks, Denny Hamlin and crew chief Mike Ford plan to attempt some rather far-reaching changes in an effort to discover more about their cars before entering the championship-determining segment of the season.
In his sophomore season of competition, Denny Hamlin and Ford have simply built on the momentum of 2006 and become even more of a force to deal with week to week. They finished third in the NASCAR Nextel Cup standings last year, then bristled when many wrote them off prior to the season.
Now, fresh off their first win of the season and sitting as the only team challenging Hendrick Motorsports' Jeff Gordon in the standings, Denny Hamlin and Ford have crafted a test car, of sorts, for Saturday night's Pepsi 400 at Daytona International Speedway.
"We feel like we're comfortably in a spot right now where we can experiment on things and we're kind of going to take this week and Chicago in particular and just throw something out there and see what happens," Denny Hamlin said.
So instead of concentrating on just carrying the momentum of last week's win at New Hampshire International Speedway, Denny Hamlin and Ford have decided to look further down the road and try to figure out how to gain an edge when it comes to racing in the Chase.
"I met with Mike over the week and we said that this is going to be a great confidence booster but we could be let down here in the next few weeks because we're going to try things that have never been tried before who knows by any other race team so we're going to take the weeks that we know we can be competitive and go with what we know there and the weeks that we don't know what we have like here and Chicago just throw caution to the wind," Denny Hamlin said.
It's an interesting concept, though it is not new in the sport. In 2005, Jimmie Johnson's team carried a huge advantage entering the Chase segment of the season. Crew chief Chad Knaus started experimenting, too, and the team lost its momentum and struggled to get back on track once the championship-determining, 10-race segment began.
Denny Hamlin and Ford have looked at that situation as well and are aware of the possibility. But they think they're prepared enough to handle it.
"I'm kind of a little afraid of that," Denny Hamlin said. "We talked about that, whether we can't get too excited if we run 20th to 30th one week. We can't let it get us down because we know we can run top 10 but that's not going to win us the championship.
"We need to go out there and find what it's going to take to win races and that's what we're trying to accomplish right now."
