Martinsville Win's a Big One for Denny Hamlin and a Bigger One for Joe Gibbs
Denny Hamlin has won five Sprint Cup races at Martinsville Speedway. That alone hardly made for an STP 500 surprise.
The picture was bigger. A slumping driver did not alone this portrait paint.
“This team gives me great race cars,” Hamlin said on Fox Sports 1 from Victory Lane. “It’s a great organization, one that gives me the car to do it.”
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In the post-race media conference, Hamlin added, “We had a great car after Saturday [practice] that we [thought] was capable of winning. It had the feeling it needed to have, and we just had a race where things worked out for us.
“It wasn’t scripted by any means, all the adversity we had to go through, but really, the last 60, 70 laps played out how they needed to play out for us to win.”
But his win Sunday at The Paperclip was about more than just finding Victory Lane again for the first time since May of last year.
Much more.
As race day dawned, Joe Gibbs Racing, flagship of Toyota’s NASCAR fleet, was taking on water and running its bilge pumps. Hamlin’s victory was not only his first in 31 races, it was also Gibbs’ first, and Toyota’s first, in that span. By the standards of the driver, the team and the manufacturer, it was a break from the bleak.
| Driver | Starts | Wins | Poles | Top 10s | Avg. Finish |
| Carl Edwards | 6 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 20.0 |
| Denny Hamlin | 6 | 1 | 0 | 3 | 16.5 |
| Matt Kenseth | 6 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 16.7 |
| David Ragan | 5 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 16.8 |
| Matt Crafton | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 18.0 |
| Totals | 6 | 1 | 0 | 7 | 17.5 |
Gibbs’ son, J.D., is the president of the team and, in effect, shares total responsibility for its performance with his father, the Hall of Fame football coach who now makes his living running race cars and has been doing so for more than two decades.
The younger Gibbs is suffering from a mysterious medical condition, one involving the processing of mental activity. No one seems to know what caused it. Past concussions could be at least in part responsible.
Though news of his problems only broke last week, Gibbs said in a Sunday morning media statement at the track that it has been a concern for some time.
“Basically, his situation medically, there [are] very few answers,” Gibbs said of his son. “We’ve been dealing with this for about six months, and basically what the doctors say is that they really don’t know. J.D. has lived a very active lifestyle.
“All the things that he’s done in his life physically—he’s loved all sporting events, and it’s everything from football to snowboarding, racing cars, racing motor bikes—he’s lived in a lot of ways for him, and he loved all those things. We can’t point to one serious thing that happened to him. Certainly, any injury is a possibility that led us into some of the symptoms he’s experiencing now.”
So there was that. And then there was Kyle Busch, the star driver who is out indefinitely with multiple leg fractures. The replacement, David Ragan, finished a creditable fifth in what was supposed to be Busch’s No. 18.
“This sport is a humbling sport,” Gibbs said in the winner’s media conference. “It shows you how hard it is. We work hard, extremely hard, and yeah, it’s been a long time since we won a race.
“Denny and the guys, David [Rogers, Hamlin’s crew chief], really overcame a lot. ... When you win one, it’s a humbling experience that you really want to enjoy, and we’re going to do that this week.”
A powerful, historically successful team, with an all-star cast of drivers—Busch, Hamlin, 2003 champion Matt Kenseth and Carl Edwards—had loads of problems off the track in addition to the more orthodox ones associated with failing to win races.
Hamlin had won for the 24th time in his Sprint Cup career on May 4, 2014, at what is essentially the anti-Martinsville, Talladega Superspeedway, which is long (2.66 miles), high-banked and fast compared to Martinsville’s short (.526), flat and slow. The pole winner for Sunday’s race, Joey Logano, averaged 98.461 mph. At Talladega nearly a year earlier, Brian Scott’s speed was 198.290.
The triumph of Hamlin and the Gibbs team over adversity wasn’t the day’s only item of significance. Kevin Harvick’s streak of eight straight races finishing first or second, dating back to the final three races of 2014, ended with a comparatively disappointing eighth.
California winner Brad Keselowski gave himself a modest streak of two such finishes by following Hamlin across the line.
Danica Patrick produced her best finish of the season in seventh.
The Gibbs Toyotas finished first, fourth (Kenseth), fifth (Ragan) and 17th (Edwards). All but Ragan led laps. Combined, they led 115 laps, 91 by the winner.
Furthermore, in a conclusion that has become far too foreign in the sport, the ending was exciting. Keselowski’s Ford got close enough to Hamlin’s Toyota to nudge it a bit out of shape coming off the final turn.
“My hat’s off to Brad,” Hamlin said on Fox Sports 1 afterward. “He had an option, and he took the latter.”
One assumes the former would have been wrecking Hamlin and winning by means of it.
“I just couldn’t quite complete the move to make the pass,” Keselowski said on the telecast. “It’s the best we’ve ever been here...and a good time to get it going.”
“It’s hard to be disappointed with a top-five, but we had a car capable of winning,” Kenseth added. “[It was] a disappointing ending, but [I’m] thankful we finished good. Denny is a big reason I can even run in the top 20 here.”
Hamlin said, “Even though it doesn’t cure things, it makes things better, and what this does for our race team in particular is that we’ve got some kinks in our team right now, but...this allows you, this buys you months of time to get everything worked out and get all the kinks worked out, because we know we can go on a championship run.
“Joe raised his voice, which doesn’t happen very often, told us to get off our tails and go to work, and we all did it, and [it’s] a great result for our race team.”
Hamlin had to overcome a pit-road penalty—a tire escaped the crew’s control during a stop—and drive back to the front. He took the lead from Kenseth on Lap 473 and led the final 28 laps.
As Gibbs may have told his Washington Redskins a time or two en route to three Super Bowl wins, when the going gets tough, the tough get going.
All quotes are taken from NASCAR media, team and manufacturer sources unless otherwise noted.
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