{"id":211966,"date":"2025-09-09T04:57:11","date_gmt":"2025-09-09T04:57:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/211966\/"},"modified":"2025-09-09T04:57:11","modified_gmt":"2025-09-09T04:57:11","slug":"chris-gayle-hails-denny-hamlin-for-letting-the-new-crew-chief-come-into-his-own-this-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/211966\/","title":{"rendered":"Chris Gayle Hails Denny Hamlin for Letting the New Crew Chief Come Into His Own This Season"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last November, when Denny Hamlin learned that his crew chief, Chris Gabehart, would be moving up into a senior role as competition director and Chris Gayle would take over the reins, he was caught off guard. Yet even with the surprise, Hamlin handed Gayle the time and space to find his footing.<\/p>\n

Gayle had stepped into the No. 11 program after two Cup seasons guiding Ty Gibbs, though his credentials stretched much deeper. Since 2013, he had called the shots as a JGR crew chief in Xfinity, stacking up 37 wins with Gibbs, Kyle Busch, and Erik Jones.<\/p>\n

In 2017, Gayle moved up with Jones to Cup, where the pair notched two wins in four years. He later returned to Xfinity, helming the powerhouse No. 54 car in 2021 with a rotation that featured Busch, Ty Dillon, Gibbs, Hamlin, Martin Truex Jr., and John Hunter Nemechek before Gibbs went full-time in 2022.<\/p>\n

Hamlin and Gayle had already shared eight Xfinity starts together, accentuated by a Charlotte win in the spring of 2016 and a runner-up run at Darlington. Now, 28 races into the current season, 27 of them with Hamlin behind the wheel, the duo has clicked for five Cup victories, capped by last weekend\u2019s win at Gateway.<\/p>\n

Asked how Hamlin pushes him, Gayle explained<\/a><\/strong>, \u201cIt\u2019s more Denny allowing me to come in and to have a little different input than maybe what happened before. There\u2019s a base there of things that happened. I feel like he\u2019s given me a lot of flexibility to do that.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere have been some places where he wasn\u2019t as good, places where he\u2019s really good. I didn\u2019t need to change things at places he was good. I could have a little more liberty to come in and do some stuff at some other places that have shown some improvement. <\/p>\n

\u201cSometimes it hasn\u2019t. Iowa sticks out. We weren\u2019t very good at Iowa. He\u2019s given me enough leeway and doesn\u2019t feel like he needs to take the rope on that and control what I do.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Gayle, that freedom makes all the difference. He knows they won\u2019t see eye to eye on everything, but they can sit down, hash it out, and often agree on tweaks for the next tour. Sometimes they don\u2019t, and that\u2019s part of the ebb and flow. What matters, Gayle says, is that the dialogue stays between them.<\/p>\n

He values that trust, confident that, whatever the debate, Hamlin will be in his corner the very next week. Disagreements never chip away at the veteran\u2019s effort or his belief in the team.<\/p>\n

Although Gayle had worked with Hamlin in scattered races before, he admits he hadn\u2019t grasped the full extent of Hamlin\u2019s work ethic. Over time, it has become clear. Five or six years ago, he may not have invested as heavily, but now Hamlin pours himself into every detail.<\/p>\n

Whether on the simulator, firing off late-night texts, or pinging ideas in the Slack channel with Gayle, the engineers, and the spotter, Hamlin<\/a><\/strong> stays locked in. Even in off hours, sitting on the bus, he studies data and churns out thoughts.<\/p>\n

From the outside, Gayle never realized just how fiercely competitive Hamlin is in everything he touches. Now, on the inside, he sees the real Denny Hamlin powering the No. 11 team.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last November, when Denny Hamlin learned that his crew chief, Chris Gabehart, would be moving up into a…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":211967,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[116095,11130,16412,1406,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-211966","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nascar","8":"tag-chris-gayle","9":"tag-denny-hamlin","10":"tag-joe-gibbs-racing","11":"tag-nascar","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115172569604241849","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211966","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=211966"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211966\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/211967"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=211966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=211966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=211966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}