Aside from allowing that he and Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Ty Gibbs are “in a good place” after last Sunday’s contentious wreck at New Hampshire Motor Speedway,
Denny Hamlin was loath to provide details of team meetings during the following week.
Hamlin and Gibbs were battling for 11th place at Loudon, with Gibbs stubbornly holding the position. Hamlin, who is in the NASCAR Cup Playoffs, had the faster car, but Gibbs, who did not qualify for the postseason, was adept in blocking Hamlin’s progress.
On Lap 110, out of frustration, Hamlin let his No. 11 Toyota drift up the track into the left rear quarter of Gibbs’s Camry. Gibbs spun into the outside wall, his race ruined. Christopher Bell, trailing Hamlin narrowly avoided the wreck involving his two teammates.
“I think they are in a good place,” Hamlin said of the issues with Gibbs. “We had some meetings this week, and they were all productive meetings. The guts of that are going to be confidential…
“All the (Gibbs) drivers had an opportunity to speak and try to come up with a plan. We did our best to come up with one.”
Hamlin did express regret for the wreck itself.
“Certainly, absolutely,” he said. “I definitely got hot under the collar, and it went too far on my end. There (were) things I wish I could have done a little bit differently.”
Toyota driver Bubba Wallace was not as reticent in discussing protocols between teammates—or between drivers for the same manufacturer.
“I think, for the most part, everybody in the field kind of understands the situation, some different from others,” Wallace said. “And the timing of understanding is different from others. As far as Toyota teammates, understanding the JGR layout, we race really, really hard.
“I’ve had conversations with ‘CBell’ this year of how we race together, and we got on the same page. I’ve had conversations with Ty on how we race each other. Looking at all that stuff between the 11 (Hamlin) and the 54 (Gibbs), maybe there’s some underlying stuff that we’re not seeing or races in the past. But talking about it irons things out.”
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