Denny Hamlin reacts to Chris Gabehart claiming Penske is 'untouchable' after New Hampshire, paints bleak picture for Phoenix

Team Penske has figured something out at Phoenix, and it’s led to multiple championships for them over the last couple of seasons. Denny Hamlin is growing concerned Joe Gibbs Racing can’t close the gap.

After New Hampshire this past weekend, Chris Gabehart, the competition director for Joe Gibbs Racing and former crew chief for Hamlin, voiced some anxieties regarding Penske: “The biggest thing you have to take away from today, with this aero package and the same tires at Phoenix and a one-mile raceway, the Penske cars are completely untouchable again,” Gabehart stated.

“I know what it’s like to be untouchable. We’ve been fortunate enough to be on the right side of that, but the reality is we have a lot of work to do with this package. And that’s the focus. The rest of it is just noise. We have to get better.”

You won’t find Hamlin disagreeing. He believes that if Ryan Blaney, Joey Logano or Austin Cindric can make the Championship 4, it might be curtains for the rest of the field: “I think this is our Phoenix tire. I do know that this is the Phoenix aero package,” Hamlin added, via the latest episode of his Actions Detrimental podcast. “So yeah, I think this could be deja vu.”

So how would Hamlin and JGR put a stop to it? At the moment, they’re just hoping Team Penske misses the cut: “If you’re not a Penske fan, that’s probably what you should hope. … If we re-racked and ran tomorrow, we would have the same result. It’ll take an extensive overhauling of philosophy to get another two percent of grip out of our cars,” Hamlin said.

“We’re not going to be able to tweak our way to the speed that the Penske cars had. If they carry that moving forward, we’re not going to be able to — we will not overcome that, if it correlates to Phoenix.”

It would be majorly disappointing to Hamlin, and many NASCAR Cup Series fans, for Team Penske to simply dominate the championship race again in 2025. Whether or not that comes to fruition remains to be seen, but there’s only a couple of weeks for the rest of the field to make up ground for Phoenix.

More on Denny Hamlin, NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs

Meanwhile, the larger story involving Hamlin stemming from New Hampshire has to do with an incident that between him and Ty Gibbs this past Sunday. On the Actions Detrimental podcast, Hamlin was asked about the contact he had with Gibbs during that race, leading to Gibbs’ No. 54 Toyota being sent into the wall.

“We were racing really too hard,” Hamin stated. “I know this is going to trigger some people about, ‘Oh, racing hard.’ When you’re racing a teammate — A, a teammate, and B, a teammate with nothing to gain — I agree that everyone should race to win the race. However, we’re not racing to win the race.

“We’re racing, at the time, for 11th place. …We’re all (the playoff drivers) battling and scratching and clawing to try to get some stage points, which is going to be life or death for us. It’s our air that we need to move on.”

Hamlin continued: “I felt as though a little bit wronged in the sense of my teammate out of the playoffs should not be the hardest car on the track to pass. For God’s sake, Ross Chastain let me by. He’s on the cut line.”

As Hamlin mentioned, he and Ty Gibbs were battling for 11th during Lap 110 of the NASCAR Cup Series playoff race at New Hampshire. And since it was the Round of 12 opener, it was important for Hamlin to have a strong finish to make sure he stays above the cut line. 

Hamlin and Gibbs compete for Joe Gibbs Racing (JGR), which is owned by legendary NFL head coach Joe Gibbs. Ty Gibbs, the grandson of Joe Gibbs, missed out on reaching the playoffs this season and is still looking for his first race victory in the NASCAR Cup Series. 

— On3’s Brian Jones contributed to this article.