2023 has been a solid year for Denny Hamlin, as a driver and a team owner. He qualified for the 2023 NASCAR Cup Series playoffs quite early on in the season and was a contender for the regular season championship. He has won two races so far this year and was one of the best drivers in the first playoff race at Darlington race last Sunday, despite not winning due to a crew error. Unfortunately, all this good only led his boss, Joe Gibbs, to take a shot at his #11 driver.

As we know, being a team owner, Hamlin is extremely proud of his two drivers who both managed to make it into the top 16. At Darlington, one of Hamlin’s drivers came very close to winning the race and the other one drove an incredible recovery drive to finish in the top 10 from the back of the pack. Still, Gibbs seems to have a problem with this dynamic.

Joe Gibbs explains what his start driver Denny Hamlin is doing wrong

It was Reddick who came very close to winning the first playoff race of the season at Darlington but missed out narrowly as he finished in second place. Bubba Wallace, on the other hand, found himself spinning out after being tagged in the last lap of the first stage, pushing him to the back of the pack. But over the course of the race, Wallace drove through the pack and eventually finished in an impressive seventh place.

All in all, 23XI Racing’s performance was impressive, and it is a positive for Hamlin and his partner, $2 Billion worth Michael Jordan. But 23XI Racing is not the only team Hamlin has responsibilities toward. The 42-year-old is a full-time race card driver for Joe Gibbs Racing and is gunning to win his maiden Cup Series championship.

In light of all this, on the latest episode of the Actions Detrimental podcast, Hamlin and his boss sat down and discussed the former’s role as a team owner.

Joe Gibbs is an iconic name in NASCAR and he is one of the most recognizable and successful team owners of all time. But the veteran feels that being a driver is far better than being an owner, due to a number of reasons, and that he didn’t understand why Denny wanted to be a team owner.

Gibbs said, “You’re going to have fun, you drive a race car for a living, everybody wants to do that. You make all the money, if we win a purse on a weekend and he gets half. He pays four people to mess around with his motor over something. I pay 450 people to work on a race car and the other thing is, they all got great-looking girls as drivers so you got fun, money, and girls so anyway, that’s my deal. You got a good deal, I don’t know why you want to be an owner. That’s the only thing I question,” the 82-year-old said.

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Denny Hamlin Brushes off Darlington Disappointment

There is no question that Denny Hamlin was frustrated and disappointed with what happened at Darlington. But the 42-year-old remained calm and diplomatic after the race.

The #11 JGR driver said, “I thought my team did great all day long. Afterward, I mentioned that this is just a game of millimeters. Things just don’t go on perfectly. These guys have muscle memory that I hit the lug for a certain amount of time if there’s just a little hitch or whatever.”

The silver lining in all of this is that the #11 car was flying in the first two stages of the race. Had it not been for the crew mishap, it would have been extremely difficult to stop Hamlin from winning. If the car runs as well as it did at Darlington, Hamlin will have a good chance to conquer Kansas Speedway.

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