It’s no secret that the No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing pit crew of Denny Hamlin’s car this season is in a slump. This was a crew leading the charts in individual and average pit stop time for the first quarter of the 2024 season. But as the playoffs approached, things seemingly started to fall apart, leaving the fate of Hamlin’s appearance in the NASCAR Cup Series Championship 4 round at Phoenix in uncertain hands.
It’s not that a driver’s performance can’t make an impact on a race, but a pit crew can certainly make or break it. We saw this with the No. 11 crew’s heroic performance in the final laps of the Toyota Owners 400 at Richmond Raceway in March. Hamlin entered pit lane in third but his pit crew sent him out into first place as they beat the crews of the two leading cars by over a second. We’ve also seen the flip side of this over the summer as the No. 11 crew moved too quickly during a pit stop at the Hollywood Casino 400 at Kansas Speedway that resulted in having to jack the car back up to tighten a right rear wheel which lost them over ten positions while sitting on pit road.
