Before Denny Hamlin started the Cook Out 400 race, his former crew chief waddled up to his window net enthusiastically. Chris Gabehart got “a feeling” that everything was right about the 11 team – and Hamlin laughed it off initially. However, after 400 laps, he got out of his car and hugged Gabehart tightly – the latter’s accurate prediction spoke volumes about his Joe Gibbs Racing influence.

Doubts had crept in during the off-season as Chris Gayle replaced Denny Hamlin’s crew chief. Hamlin also lost longtime sponsor FedEx, and many people touted that Hamlin’s career may be facing a big roadblock. But Chris Gabehart was there to guide the team out of those doubts.

Chris Gabehart was bubbling with pride

The excellence of the driver-crew chief duo was why all those doubts appeared. Denny Hamlin and Chris Gabehart clinched 22 Cup Series race victories together. Yet when Gabehart left the No. 11 team role, he assumed a bigger one – the competition director of JGR. That meant he could oversee everything, including how Hamlin’s new crew members were faring. He could mentor his replacement as well. Gabehart asked Gayle to immerse himself in the No. 11 team’s culture, understand how the group works, and then learn how he fits best within that dynamic. Gabehart also had a healthy hand of influence on how the teams worked setup-wise.

So, after Denny Hamlin and co. got the job done at Martinsville Speedway, Chris Gabehart felt a surge of happiness. He confessed so in a Sirius XM NASCAR episode: “This one was, for a number of reasons, my most significant or the one that sticks with me the most, I’ll say. One is it’s the 11 car, and I take a ton of pride in it. I was so happy to see that group succeed. I have a ton of pride in watching them succeed without me and doing it the way they did.” Then he boldly confessed his overarching impact: “I constantly told all of them over the off-season, if you do it this way and if you buy into it, it will be just as strong, if not stronger because new ideas come to the table and that’s healthy.”

Hamlin didn’t just win the race; he dominated. The #11 led 274 laps, won stage 2, and finished 4 seconds ahead of the rest of the field as he powered his car to victory lane. Buying into the philosophy worked, and that’s exactly what Hamlin’s mentality was going into the crew chief change. He said on his Actions Detrimental podcast, “I sucked it up and said I’m gonna do the best I can and not waste the last years of my career p—— and moaning about this. I’m just gonna be a professional and do everything I can to make sure this works out.”

What made Chris Gabehart more happy was that this newly arranged team achieved something that he could not. Denny Hamlin’s last Martinsville win came in 2015, before Gabehart’s era. After that, the duo scraped Victory Lane several times, clinching 6 top-fives. So, the JGR executive shared how this win was special: “Martinsville was a huge bucket list win for me that I never got to achieve as a crew chief with Denny. We won so many laps and won so many stages and so many top fives, just never could get the win. To see it all come together without me on the box was definitely [great], deep down, sure, would I have loved to have won as a crew chief, absolutely, but I had a huge hand in that and I know it and it was just awesome to see all those guys get to celebrate that.”

Gabehart was clearly brimming with satisfaction last weekend. Similarly, Denny Hamlin attributed his win to both his former and current partners.

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Ameliorating the differences

Well, there was a sharp reaction to Chris Gabehart losing his footing in the #11 team. Denny Hamlin confessed that he was “shocked” at the role shuffle, even conceding that he was not happy with Joe Gibbs at one point. However, what restored his faith was looking at Chris Gayle’s successful history. The crew chief had clinched two Cup Series victories earlier, with Erik Jones in Indianapolis and Darlington. Besides, he guided Ty Gibbs to a stellar 2022 championship season in the Xfinity Series. So Hamlin chose to pause and try to work it out. The result as we saw, has been spectacular – Hamlin led 274 laps en route to the win last week.

According to Denny Hamlin, Chris Gayle had a positive impact on his Martinsville victory. He said, “I heard the engineers talking post-race that he [Chris Gayle] did have quite a bit of influence on this setup and kind of looking at some of the parameters in which we look and approach a short track. Maybe he’s got a few things that he looks at and says, ‘When I’ve had success here, this has been the most important thing.’”

Then, of course, Denny Hamlin lauded his former crew chief. Not only did Chris Gabehart guide the 11 to a win, but he also fetched good finishes for other Toyotas, as it was a Toyota 1-2-3 at Martinsville, just like Hendrick Motorsports the previous year. Hamlin said, “To have it to where all your cars are up front and dominating, then it says that the general team approach is the right thing. Now, did the 11, the 20 [Christopher Bell], and the 23 [Bubba Wallace] have the same setup? I don’t even think close, which tells you there’s something else we really seem to have hit that was better for all of us… It’s good to see all Toyotas running well because it tells you our box is maybe bigger than what we thought it was.”

Clearly, Denny Hamlin and Chris Gabehart are very well connected even now. Do you think Hamlin’s new crew chief, Chris Gayle, can lead him to the elusive Cup Series Championship? Let us know in the comments!