JGR has to work harder to avoid future penalties, says Hamlin

Denny Hamlin said the penalty to his No. 11 team for a rear suspension infraction after Darlington is unfortunate because he knows it had nothing to do with him winning the Southern 500.

Joe Gibbs Racing was issued an L1-level penalty this week, resulting in a two-race suspension for Hamlin's crew chief, Mike Wheeler. Hamlin will work with interim crew chief Chris Gabehart at Richmond as well as the playoff opener next weekend at Chicagoland Speedway.

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Hamlin, who is also the defending winner at Richmond, pointed out on Friday that he's won at Darlington before without inspection issues and spoke confidently about doing so again in the future.

"I'd love to line them up again; that track is special to me," Hamlin said. "It was a special weekend, all in all. It just took something that was super positive and turned it to a negative pretty quick."

When word started to come down that there was an issue with the car, Hamlin revealed Wheeler went and looked at the part in question himself. When asked later, Wheeler agreed it was penalty-worthy and Hamlin also felt the penalty fit the violation.

"We can talk about taking wins away in the future, I think it's definitely a possibility," Hamlin said. "As long as it's the same for everyone, I think is key. Make sure when someone else is in there with the same violation it gets the same penalty and treatment, even if it's in the playoffs.

"That's what makes me nervous – in the playoffs is NASCAR going to do the same things when so much is on the line? Obviously, it's negative publicity for everyone involved, so I just hope it's the same. And I'm fine with taking wins away."

According to Hamlin, his car was legal when it hit the racetrack, and the 367 laps around Darlington – one of the rougher tracks on the circuit – took a toll on the car. He also hit the wall late in the race. But Hamlin said the team takes responsibility for what happened.

"We got to do a better job going back now that we know what we built in [tolerance-wise] was not enough. We'll fix it and go forward," Hamlin said. "If the shoe was on the other foot and it was one of my competitors, I would expect the same kind of penalty. We'll move on and try to win this week.

"To be fair, it wasn't right at that moment [at the R&D Center]. We didn't start the race with an illegal car. It worked its way that way. And when I say it worked its way, it was so close. But so close doesn't matter; it was still over the line. I hate the position I'm put in. I hate the position [Wheeler] is put in, we just didn't allow for running into the wall with five laps to go. We didn't allow for the dirt and the grime to get in there and loosen those things up as bad as it did. It's unfortunate."

Fortunately for Hamlin, he is still locked into the playoffs because of a July victory at New Hampshire Motor Speedway. What makes the Darlington penalty sting is that Hamlin lost five playoff points from the victory, taking his total from 12 to seven. Playoff points could be what helps a driver advance through each round.

As for what Hamlin has to say to those who use the "cheating" word, he offered some words of wisdom.

"How many wins does Richard Petty have? Two hundred? One of them was with a big block [engine], so does he really have 199?" Hamlin asked. "Listen, my advice to those who say this or that is all the old-school fans who have been watching NASCAR forever, your driver cheated at some point in their career and they got away with it. The difference is it was inches, not thousandths, because they didn't measure that stuff back then.

"It's just a tighter box that we live in today and the engineers and the crew chiefs are so smart they fight for that little bit because they know it can make the difference in the smallest of deficits on the racetrack.

"So, I'm going to keep telling my crew chief to keep fighting for every square inch of that car to be the best. But it makes no difference to me [what's said]. I know I could line up with IROC cars at Darlington and I'm going to have an advantage there."