“I feel good about our performance, I feel crappy about how we finished.” Denny Hamlin’s words following the 2025 Coca-Cola 600 portrayed a sordid image. The Joe Gibbs Racing driver was a force to be reckoned with from Stage 2, fighting tooth and nail with William Byron. The two exchanged the lead 12 times, but this fight faced a bitter end on lap 348 when Hamlin’s No. 11 pit crew made a mistake.
Mechanical issues have plagued Denny Hamlin’s crew for the past few weeks. From a clutch problem and a transaxle failure in Kansas to his car going up in flames in Texas, the problems have been plenty. Yet even after the Charlotte mishap, Hamlin chose to deflect blame from his team.
Denny Hamlin silently laments about pit struggles
Fuel issues have plagued the JGR veteran several times in his career. In a 2021 Cup Series race at Pocono Raceway, William Byron and Denny Hamlin both led late in the race, and Hamlin snatched the lead eventually and even took the white flag, but didn’t end up winning the race! This bizarre situation occurred during a 140-lap fuel-mileage shootout. As Hamlin headed for the win, his fuel tank relayed a tragic message – it was dry. Hamlin ended up finishing 14th and delivered a sobering post-race interview, saying, “That’s tough. I mean, I hate seeing the white coming to pit road. It’s just so frustrating.”
Fast forward to 2025, and the No. 11 JGR team’s problems have hardly stopped. However, it wasn’t as tragic as pitting on the white flag lap. When Hamlin pitted with 52 laps left at the Coca-Cola 600, the fuel can of Hamlin’s fueler, Kenneth Purcell, either malfunctioned or was not engaged properly. As a result, Hamlin fell short of 4 gallons of fuel, which cost him 12 laps in the end. He had to pit again on lap 389 while Byron and Ross Chastain battled away, and he finished 16th.
In the most recent episode of ‘Actions Detrimental’, co-host Jared Allen broached this topic. He asked Denny Hamlin if the veteran talks to his pit crew after such crucial mistakes. Hamlin tried his best to avoid maligning his team’s image: “No, that’s the team’s place. I’m the driver…It’s not my job to yell at the offensive lineman. I get it that the quarterback does sometimes. But…they’re trying. It’s not like they’re trying to scr-w up, it happens sometimes. I have an issue because I know what has happened to me.” However, Hamlin added, “It drives me crazy because it happens so often.” The painful Pocono memory still haunts him: “I mean, I’ve had to pit on the white flag lap of Pocono while leading. F— me, man!” However, this isn’t even the first time this season that Hamlin has had late race struggles.
In the April race at Talladega, a pack of Toyotas was leading in the final laps. However, Denny Hamlin learned about his fuel shortage with 6 laps to go. Hamlin analyzed that failure: “Talladega was the last time that it happened, and it wasn’t that long ago…It was like a stutter plug, in the sense of like trying to hit it, it didn’t go in, and then he got it in. And that extra 4/10ths of fuel that we didn’t get was not enough fuel for me to go hammer down at the last part of the race.” That crucial mistake left him two laps short of the checkered flag, and Hamlin finished 21st.
However, Hamlin was not entirely critical about his crew. After all, they are one of the best in the competition right now, and played a huge role in Hamlin competing for the lead. Hamlin added, “I am super frustrated, but if we wanna talk about the pit crew, we can talk about how they picked me up seven spots on the first pit stop, and three or four on the next. I started 20th, they got me half the spots.” These excellent pit stops allowed Hamlin to finish 7th in Stage 1 and 2nd in Stages 2 and 3, giving him a decent points outing despite being unable to compete for the win at the end.
Although Denny Hamlin is trying to protect Joe Gibbs’ pit crew, his crew chief, Chris Gayle, is well aware of their mistakes. The Charlotte mishap was a reminder to improve.
Analyzing and looking forward
While the No. 11 pit crew has been under fire, it has also received a lot of praise. Remember the race at Darlington Raceway? Everybody expected William Byron to win the race, having led the first 243 of 293 laps. However, Denny Hamlin’s jackman, Joel Bouagnon, had a foolproof technique using the jack. That shaved off tenths of a second in the final 8.3-second pit stop, and landed Hamlin in 1st place instead of third.
So, Hamlin’s pit crew has a stellar reputation that it failed to live up to in Charlotte. However, despite their mishap, after the Coca-Cola 600 race, the No. 11 crew was still ranked best of the night in Pit Crew Rating. So, Hamlin’s crew chief examined the places where they fell short with a more critical lens, so that they can get better.
The No. 11 crew chief, Chris Gayle, carefully analyzed what went wrong with fueler Kenneth Purcell’s work. He said, “I knew the total plug time I needed to get that amount of fuel, right? And I thought we were plugged in for that, per the stopwatch, per the video I watched. But for whatever reason, the second can, when they plugged it, it barely took any fuel out at all…I can’t tell from the view right now if it’s a bad plug, like open on the bottom — we saw a bunch of fuel coming out of the bottom. But it got about four gallons less than we expected in it. I would have needed to sit there for another two seconds to get four gallons in it.” He added, “We’re all disappointed with the ultimate finish at the end of the race, but the rest was positive.”
Evidently, the No. 11 team is choosing to grow out of this problem optimistically. As the 2025 season pushes ahead, let us see if Denny Hamlin can handle it well.
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