"This is a different time": Denny Hamlin comments on JGR's transition with sponsorship strategy amid FedEx's departure

Denny Hamlin recently shared his thoughts on the current scenario at Joe Gibbs Racing after undergoing a transition related to sponsors. In the last few years, the team owned by Coach Gibbs has lost two of its prominent sponsors, FedEx and M&M's.

But while M&M's exit played a big role in #18 driver Kyle Busch leaving JGR, FedEx's recent exit from NASCAR wasn't detrimental to Denny Hamlin's future with the team. The #11 driver was announced to be sponsored by King's Hawaiian for four races in 2025. Along with that, Hamlin also has a variety of sponsors who will appear on his racecar for a handful of races in the current season.

Ahead of this Sunday's race at Atlanta, the JGR veteran was asked about the transition in his team, where the team went from having major sponsors for 30 races like FedEx to now having sponsors for 4-5 races. Hamlin replied:

"Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of good talks going on, a lot of good meetings and what not as regards to the #11 car and obviously when you have someone that's part of the sport for 20 years like FedEx was then it's certainly makes things a lot easier. But this is a different time and certainly we feel confident that we'll get through these things throughout the year." [00:30]

It's worth mentioning that earlier this year, Denny Hamlin shared his take on sponsorship in modern-day NASCAR. He said that sponsorship is 'hard to come by' and that the dollars from that channel is 'not flowing like they used to.'

Because of this, Hamlin remarked that everyone has had to adjust 'quite a bit.'

"Obviously, there’s certain aspects that JGR has to price into their pricing that’s probably tough. It’s part of it. But, certainly having one sponsor for 20 years made things pretty easy and now it’s all kind of catching up. Is it concerning from my end? Maybe a little bit. But it’s probably more concerning from JGR’s standpoint,” he added.

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Kevin Harvick comments on Denny Hamlin needing to be more engaged in 2025 because of major change in his team

Ahead of the 2025 season, JGR announced that Denny Hamlin would no longer have his longtime crew chief, Chris Gabehart, leading the #11 team. In his place, Hamlin was assigned Chris Gayle as his new crew chief.

Speaking about this on the Happy Hour podcast, Kevin Harvick likened it to the Kyle Busch scenario, as he emphasized on the need for Hamlin having a good start to the season 'to make it all go away.' In fact, Harvick claimed that the #11 driver would have to be more focused than usual.

"He’s going to have to be more engaged, which is going to take away time from 23XI, and the things that he has to do over there. The things that happen, and all those things outside of his team, because now he’s — in order for this to work as good as it did with Gabe Gabehart with the No. 11, he’s going to have to take a big chunk of that time to put into the No. 11 team, because it just functioned."

Harvick claimed that the same process allowed him and Rodney Childers during their partnership to do 'all these other things'. The former SHR driver said that with Gabehart, Denny Hamlin could do the other things, considering their system worked great.