Denny Hamlin’s Joe Gibbs Racing pit crew were the main protagonists on a chilly Sunday night at the Richmond Raceway. Just when fortune finally appeared to have favored Martin Truex Jr., a late pitstop and restart allowed Hamlin and his crew to take a few controversial advantages and grab the victory for themselves.
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Not surprisingly, Truex Jr. wasn’t very pleased with the way his teammate jumped the restart and raced him afterward. He told reporters, “I feel like the #11 [Hamlin] used me up going into Turn 1 and I didn’t appreciate a teammate racing me like that. I wish he would have given me a chance. That’s the way it is.”
Truex didn’t appreciate Hamlin racing him that way
Took a it is what it is tone pic.twitter.com/I4joiIgvNA
— Matt Weaver (@MattWeaverRA) April 1, 2024
When Truex Jr.’s thoughts were put in front of Hamlin post-race, he defended himself with some valid reasoning. His pitstop time was 8.99 seconds, whereas Truex Jr.’s was 10.29 seconds. Though he acknowledged that his restart was close to a jumped one, he wasn’t willing to give up an advantage that his crew had given him.
He said, “Yeah, I mean, I went right at it, for sure. I did that because I saw those guys rolling to me. (Logano) was laying back. (Truex) was rolling a couple of miles an hour quicker than I was. I wasn’t going to let them have an advantage that my team earned on pit road.”
Denny Hamlin concedes it was close to a jumped restart but he wasn’t going to give up the advantage his pit crew gave him pic.twitter.com/4P5FwtIwL1
— Matt Weaver (@MattWeaverRA) April 1, 2024
Courtesy of the move, Hamlin won his second race of the 2024 season. He concluded, “Certainly, made sure I went to my nose, got there. But I took off right away. Still, we were side by side down the water into turn one.” Though a number of race leaders are disappointed with the way things ended, NASCAR has ruled Hamlin clear of misdoing.
Hamlin is all praise for his pit crew that won him the race on Sunday
The members of the crew who worked on Hamlin’s car at Richmond were handpicked by him from the former crew of Truex Jr. a few years earlier. “They were on Martin’s team a few years ago, but they were young and making a lot of mistakes that first year. The pit crews and the drivers got together and they wanted to make changes,” he said. “I ended up with those guys at really the right time, right when they were starting to all click on all cylinders.”
The #11 team headed by crew chief Chris Gabehart has been operating at near-perfect efficiency since the beginning of the season. Going to Martinsville for the next race, Hamlin and his men have all the momentum in the world.
