With just one race left to determine the four drivers for the Championship race, things have just gotten interesting for NASCAR fans. After Logano and Reddick won the first two races of the round of 8, being above the cutoff line was not enough to make drivers secure about their Championship hopes. For Denny Hamlin, the situation turned from bad to worse as NASCAR visited Martinsville.

Making the cut-off just became a lot tougher for Denny Hamlin. Faced with an eighteen-point deficit to the elimination line, the Chesterfield, Virginia native crashed halfway through practice and will not make qualifying for the 2024 Xfinity 500 at Martinsville. A five-time winner at the racetrack, only three hours from his hometown, Hamlin will now have to move to a backup car on Sunday. Hence, he will start from the rear when the race waves for green, which could spell trouble for the Joe Gibbs #11 team’s final 4 advances.

Throttle troubles strike Denny Hamlin, adding to season of woes

It must hurt Hamlin even more, considering he posted the third-fastest speed at the end of the 45-minute practice session. He was leading the pack in long-run speed too—clocking the fastest 10, 15, and 20-lap averages, before his unfortunate incident. Rolling into Turn 3 after minor adjustments to his car only a few minutes prior, Hamlin suddenly suffered a hung throttle, lost control, and rear-ended the wall. To make matters worse, this isn’t an isolated incident; it’s just the latest in a long line of struggles that Joe Gibbs Racing has faced with Toyota Racing Development in 2024.

This recent setback puts another rocky road of obstacles on Denny Hamlin’s path to the Phoenix finale. He’s already missed it twice since NASCAR rolled out this Next-Gen vehicle. But will his recurrent tough luck in the final elimination race make it three seasons in a row? He will already have the worst pit-box selection at the ‘Half-Mile of Mayhem.’ So it doesn’t look too good for Denny Hamlin.

In his own words to the media after the incident, “It’s hard enough to win these races straight up. And even if you have the pull, it’s just hard to win… Our battle is going to be very much up-hill… If the backup car has any kind of speed like the primary, I feel okay about it. Certainly, the chances of getting in on points now are done. We just have to figure out a way to win the race.” But will he be able to do that from so far back at a short track like Martinsville? It’s hard to tell until the field makes a few laps on Sunday. Although statistically, it’s not impossible, since three out of his five wins at the Paperclip came from starting positions 15th or below.

But the Gen-7 car has proved a beast tough-to-tame for Denny Hamlin on his home track. In his last five appearances at Martinsville, he’s finished top-5 thrice. But that #11 car’s threat on its stomping grounds has not felt the same as it used to in years past. It feels like those demands for an increase in horsepower to the current generation of cars early in the season have returned to haunt him adversely, in the shape of all these engine troubles he’s facing.

And as his JGR teammate, Martin Truex Jr churned out the fastest laps in his Toyota during practice, the duality screamed out the best evidence of TRD’s strange coin-flip year in 2024.

How JGR and TRD have kept falling short in 2024

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If a Gibbs car does not win at Martinsville, it’ll stretch the team’s winless run to a staggering 16 races. That’s a tough pill to swallow for the only four-car organization backed by Toyota. If you’re wondering, Christopher Bell won the last race in 2024 for Joe Gibbs Racing, which came back in June at Loudon. The #20 driver has looked a few notches ahead of his teammates this year, but even he has not been safe from all the engine troubles. Just a few weeks before that, Bell’s race at Gateway was all but in the bag, until a valve spring issue cost him a shot at victory.

Then in August, a determined Martin Truex Jr’s engine gave up at Richmond early in the final stage. The retiring #19 driver had started his race from the front row, and that race felt like one of his best shots at making the Playoffs. It was also Truex’s first DNF of the season. Even Coach Gibbs’ grandson, Ty Gibbs, driver of the #54, faced an engine failure at Pocono earlier in the year. He had won the pole award for that race.

And finally came Denny Hamlin’s big muck-up days before the Playoffs opener in Atlanta. News suddenly broke that the #11 team had violated “NASCAR’s engine inspection requirements” for something that Toyota Racing Development took total ‘responsibility’ for. They had even “self-reported” the infraction, which went against Section 14.7.1.E&F and 14.7.1.1.B&E of the NASCAR rule book.

TRD had made a logistical error, misplacing Denny Hamlin’s Bristol-winning engine from May and taking it to their Costa Mesa facility where it was “disassembled and rebuilt” before inspection. That is an obvious violation for NASCAR, and they docked Denny Hamlin 75 championship points, and 10 playoff points while levying a $100,000 fine on crew chief Chris Gabehart. This penalty dropped the #11 driver from third to sixth in the driver’s points table.

This time around at Martinsville, a sizeable chunk of rubber stuck in Hamlin’s car’s throttle body caused his slip-up during practice. Regardless, the issues have been plentiful for the entire Joe Gibbs Racing contingent this season. And Denny Hamlin has just become the latest victim, right before it matters.