The sacred pairing between a driver and a crew chief must be one of seamless connection and trust in NASCAR. Not many teams get this right. But the ones that have achieved remarkable results on the track always have. One such pairing that worked wonders is Denny Hamlin and Dave Rogers. The chemistry between this duo was so good that Hamlin still looks back at it with fondness.
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The Joe Gibbs Racing veteran was the latest driver to be on Jeff Gluck’s 12 Questions series for The Athletic. The previous guest, Kyle Busch, had left his interview with the question of who Hamlin’s favorite crew chief of all time was. The No. 11 driver answered, “There was something about working with Dave Rogers, and this is why I hired him (at 23XI Racing, which Hamlin co-owns).
“The guy made me feel like I had the fastest car. Right before practice, it was ‘We got this, we got that. In tech, they didn’t see this; they didn’t catch that. We got this by and that by.’ I was like, ‘Oh my God, I’m driving a rocket ship!'”
All the hyping up appears to have boosted Hamlin’s morale to high levels and helped him perform better.
He worked with Rogers in the Xfinity Series in 2006 and 2007. Together, they secured five victories, which was two more than what Joe Gibbs Racing had won since the program began eight years earlier. Following a long hiatus, they reunited in 2015 in the Cup Series. Rogers took over the No. 11 team in Darian Grubb’s place.
The Xfinity Series success that Hamlin and Rogers enjoyed
What Hamlin and Rogers did in the Xfinity Series warrants a deeper look. The team had struggled in its initial years, unable to secure enough victories to justify all the finances that were being poured into the series. The undeniable understanding that the duo had was what led to ending this bad spell.
Their success proved that they can communicate what a car needs to deliver on the track. Rogers said in a 2015 interview, “We didn’t win races with a winning program. We took a program that wasn’t winning races, and we made it win races.”
Hamlin, too, was extremely proud of what they achieved together in the second tier. He said, “We were running fifth to 10th in the (Xfinity) Series, and that’s all JGR’s cars were capable of. When he came down and brought his knowledge together, Dave and I automatically took it right to that next level within a year.”
Even back then, Hamlin believed that Rogers was one of the top five crew chiefs in the garage. It is no surprise that he made him the senior director of competition at 23XI Racing.
