“Tons of Faith in Him”: Denny Hamlin Not Selling His Martin Truex Jr. Stock Just Yet

Martin Truex Jr. has had a pretty spectacular fall from grace this season. The Joe Gibbs Racing driver was crowned the regular season champion. But as soon as the playoffs started, his results began deteriorating, something pretty evident with his finishes of 18th, 36th, 19th, 17th, 18th, and 20th so far in the playoffs. And yet, his teammate, Denny Hamlin believes Truex might just change his fortunes very soon.

On the recent episode of his podcast show Actions Detrimental, the #11 driver recently opened up on what he feels Truex and the #19 team could do in the final round of the playoffs before the big race in Phoenix. Hamlin was pretty optimistic about Truex, who himself was pretty optimistic after the race at the ROVAL.

Denny Hamlin backs Martin Truex Jr.’s change of fortunes

During the episode of the podcast, Hamlin revealed that he believes it’d be far from wise to write off Martin Truex Jr. from this season’s championship contention. Hamlin said, “There’s something in my gut that feels like Truex is just going to fucking turn a switch on and all of a sudden be Truex. I’ll keep waiting,” 

“He said in his post-race interview, ‘Now we finally get to freaking tracks we can control our destiny. We know what we’ve got.'”

Truex had said after the race at the ROVAL, “Feel good about moving on and feel good about what we can do the next three races. Some good tracks for us and hopefully we can get something going.”

However, Hamlin noted that he said a similar thing before the start of the playoffs, and while it didn’t pan out that well for them, he still has faith in his Truex stock. “They said that about Darlington too and they had an off weekend there but I still got tons of faith in him and that team,” Hamlin added.

Kyle Petty also believes Truex can flip it around

After the field for the Round of 8 was set post-ROVAL, Kyle Petty opened up on the peculiar trajectory of Martin Truex Jr.’s season in 2023. Petty claimed that while Truex’s regular season was impressive for what it was, his playoffs campaign has been equally depressive.

“Here’s a guy who we had going all the way to Phoenix, all the way to the championship back in June and July and now crickets. We don’t even hear him mentioned as the guy,” he added.

Petty wondered whether there’s a switch that Truex can turn on to change his fortunes, and just as Hamlin, the former NASCAR driver too believed that yes, there is indeed a switch that Truex can very well turn on.