Joe Gibbs admits two-year pursuit to solve Denny Hamlin’s crew chief dilemma

NASCAR team owner Joe Gibbs has revealed that they spent almost two years trying to promote Denny Hamlin's crew chief at Joe Gibbs Racing. The team announced Chris Gabehart as the team's competition director last year. He moved from working with Hamlin’s No. 11 team as crew chief and ended a six-year partnership. Chris Gayle, who previously worked with Ty Gibbs, stepped in to his role.

During a post-race interview on Sunday (Feb. 23), Gibbs explained why Gabehart was promoted and shared that they first talked to him about this new role nearly two years ago.

"We felt like that we needed some help for our crew chiefs in general, all four of them. They're so caught up on their cars, and they're so focused on it. We felt like by getting somebody to look at things overall, we might be able to give them more help, and so that was our reason for that," Gibbs said (14:15 onwards).

"I think Chris [Gabehart] was the right guy. We tried to talk him into it about a year and a half, two years ago, and we were able to get it done this time," Gibbs added.

Hamlin and Gabehart had won 23 races including two Daytona 500s in a row and reached the Championship 4 three times since 2019.

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"You’ve got to always trust your leadership to make the right calls" - Denny Hamlin on crew chief change

Denny Hamlin finished sixth in the second race of the 2025 NASCAR Cup season in Atlanta. Earlier at Daytona, he was leading but ended up with a 24th place finish after a last-lap multi-car crash. Hamlin, who was earlier surprised by the change, spoke about working with Gayle earlier this month and said (via Racer):

"Chris (Gayle) is someone that I ran just a couple of Xfinity races (with), but we’re learning each other, and certainly, it’s a process. We’re not going to just figure each other out right off the bat. I’m trying to do things as I did before, and he’s trying to understand that.

"But I’m also trying to give him the full free rein to do things however he sees fit as well. He got to this position for a reason, and so you’ve got to always trust your leadership to make the right calls... My job is to do it today and go there tomorrow and tell them a direction that we need to work on. That’s really important, and I feel like it’s getting off to a good start."

Denny Hamlin had a strong start with Chris Gayle at the NASCAR exhibition race at Bowman Gray Stadium. He won his heat race and led 28 laps in the Cook Out Clash before finishing third.