Yahoo Autos Hamlin, Gabehart channeling experience for Martinsville clock
In the closing minutes of his latest podcast episode, Denny Hamlin was given a statistic that made him hang his head.
Sunday, Nov. 3 will mark 3,507 days since he last won at Martinsville Speedway. For that highlight, the calendar would need to be flipped back to March 29, 2015. This Sunday, he’ll take the green flag there with his season hanging in the balance.
“Do y’all realize how many races we’ve dominated, and it’s always the fall race?” Hamlin said on Actions Detrimental. “We dominate the fall races. We led a bazillion laps and had a bad pit stop in 2021 [while] leading the race, came out eighth with not many laps to go.
“We’ve always had something keep us from winning there, and me and Chris [Gabehart] just want to win at Martinsville. Like [expletive] all the final four and all that, that’s great, but we just want to win there. That’s such a great racetrack and a track that I take a lot of pride in, and man, I want to win it bad.”
Should the pendulum finally swing in their direction, the elusive victory would put Hamlin in the championship hunt. Sunday will be the duo’s 12th race together at Martinsville Speedway since they paired together in 2019.
“I’ve chosen not to look up how many laps we’ve led at this track without actually getting a win together, but I think it’s probably close to some sort of record for a crew chief,” Gabehart said. “I would love to finally get it done. Winning at Martinsville is a huge event, in my mind, especially as a short tracker, and the fall race being the cutoff race of the playoffs on top of it. It’s a special one. It would be great to get it done, for sure.”
In the last 11 races at Martinsville, Hamlin led 912 laps, won a pole, and finished in the top five six times. In the fall race alone, he’s led 534 laps.
A victory is the easiest way to advance, but Gabehart acknowledged points are not out of the equation. Hamlin is in an 18-point deficit, so the first two stages will set the tone for how the team attacks the final stint.
It’s almost ironic that it comes down to Martinsville once again. A week ago, Hamlin was two laps from winning at Homestead-Miami Speedway, but Ryan Blaney and then Tyler Reddick had other plans. It was one of the most disappointing defeats for the team.
The finish aside, Homestead was another high and then low moment for the group. There have been plenty of those in the postseason, which started with an engine issue in qualifying at Atlanta Motor Speedway and carried over into the race with an ill-handling car and poor execution. There have been pit road woes, incidents on the track, and results all across the board.
“I was telling someone earlier, it’s pretty wild,” Gabehart said. “I looked at a stat earlier and through the first eight races, I think we have the third-best average finish of anybody in the playoffs and are pretty high up there overall because of the variance of the schedule. But it sure doesn’t feel that way, and where it really doesn’t feel that way is if you look at stage points. We have very little compared to those in the playoffs, which speaks to your point about having to scratch and claw throughout the entire race just to manufacture a finish. Well, those stage points, if you’re upfront all day, you get them.
“So it’s been a grind. But what’s got us here, in my mind, is the experience of the group — the experience of Denny, the experience of myself, the experience of [spotter Chris] Lambert, the trust in one another to know the situation and know that until that last checkered flag drops, the day is not over and I think we’ve been able to preserve a lot because of that. We did catch a break at Talladega that was pivotal to our year, but we’ve also not caught a lot of breaks at places like Talladega, so that happens. I don’t look at that as luck. I look at that as finally our number came up. But it’s a lot throughout this playoff for sure.”
The team needs to be ready for their moment to change the narrative of their playoffs and at Martinsville. Gabehart pointed out they were not ready at Kansas Speedway when they struggled on pit road when capable of winning. The circumstances then dictated not taking more risks than necessary at Bristol Motor Speedway to advance out of the first round. Homestead just didn’t fall their way.
“The key with this level of experience, and this group, is understanding that you need to be there to be able to capitalize on the situation whenever that caution flag falls your way, or whenever you have a fast car, or whenever the car comes down pit road,” Gabehart said. “I think [having that] experience helps a lot.”
