Crew Chief Chris Gabehart says he and Denny Hamlin have been 'capable' of winning 60 races together

For Denny Hamlin and his crew chief Chris Gabehart, Kansas was another case of coming close, but not close enough. Gabehart and Hamlin have been together full-time in NASCAR since 2019. They have 165 races together and 18 wins in that time.

After finishing P2 to Tyler Reddick, Denny Hamlin had lots to be happy about. His 23XI Racing driver won, he was P2, picked up a lot of points, and he’s the top non-winning driver in the playoff standings.

For Gabehart, it doesn’t matter if 23XI Racing does well. They are a Toyota partner and that is important. However, in his eyes, this was the 60th race that he and Hamlin were “capable” of winning. They’ve only earned 18 wins out of those 60 chances.

A lot of drivers and crew chiefs would kill for that kind of win percentage in less than five seasons.

“Sixty times. Sixty times we’ve been capable of winning,” Gabehart said, via NASCAR. “Our 60th anniversary, in my own personal way of looking at things, and there’s no one that’s a bigger critic of this race team than me. So when I tell you we’ve been capable of winning 60 times, and we only have 19, that’s frustrating. But you’re not going to win 100% of the races you’re capable of winning. The key is you’re capable of winning. I’m just so proud of my team for the longevity that we’ve shown together since 2019 and the ability to be capable of winning nearly each and every week we show up.”

That is a totally honest take from Denny Hmalin’s crew chief. He wants the 11 in victory lane, and the good thing is that they had a chance. Now they need to close out on some of these opportunities as the playoffs continue.

Denny Hamlin caught ‘sleeping’ on final restart

If you ask Denny Hamlin what went wrong, it was him. He didn’t do what he needed to do on the final restart. He expected to get a push from behind, but Kyle Larson kept backing up from him. Instead of taking off in front of him, Hamlin tried to find Larson’s bumper but never got the push.

Even though he made it to P2, he couldn’t get enough speed to get by Tyler Reddick. His pit crew was solid on the final restart, he just didn’t do what he needed to do in order to win the race.

“The No. 5 [Larson] was just laying back so much; I was trying to back up to him,” said Hamlin, via Kelly Crandall of RACER Mag. “I should have just focused forward, probably. It gave the No. 45 [Reddick] an opportunity to get up there in front of us, so just kind of sleeping on the restart, looking in the rearview instead of looking in the front.

“But hats off to my Yahoo team, Camry TRD team. Another really, really fast car. Just didn’t need that caution at the end.”

Heading into Bristol, Denny Hamlin is planning to race for a win and doesn’t want to points race. He is 49 points clear of the cutline and will likely clinch a Round of 12 spot just by starting the race. However, anything can happen as we saw this weekend at Kansas.