in part from a NASCAR Cam Video Teleconference Transcript: with #11-Denny Hamlin on September 27, 2011, an Interview with Denny Hamlin, currently 12th in the Sprint Cup Series Chase Points standings:
Q. You obviously had a tough break at New Hampshire running out of fuel, a decision that comes in part from the guy on top of the pit box. I was just wondering how you would characterize your relationship with Mike Ford right now and how it’s handled this year of ups and downs, and also, what’s the one thing you guys really need to improve on in the last eight races, the communication between each other, to be even more competitive and be up there contending for wins?
DENNY HAMLIN: Well, we all know this is a performance business, and obviously you’ve got to be competitive and contend for race wins so everyone feels good about their job. I feel like Mike is the guy for me. I feel like he’s done a great job. He won me eight races last year. Some of the things that we’ve had go wrong this year are crew chief related, some of them are not. Most of them are not. Some of them are driver related. It weighs on all of our shoulders equally, and I feel like he’s kind of received a bit of a bad rap because of that.
But I feel like he’s the reason — kind of the backbone of this race team, and obviously if you made a change, it would take a long time to get back to where I feel like we’re capable of running at this point right now. I think at times during the season we’ve gotten off track between the two of us, and I feel like these last four or five weeks the communication has been better. I feel like we were heading in the right direction, we’ve just had some things go wrong these first couple Chase races that makes it look worse than it really is.
Q. I was wondering if you could elaborate on your relationship with Mike Ford a little bit, and has there been times this year when you’ve questioned the direction of the team and thought maybe a change was needed?
DENNY HAMLIN: You always have thoughts about what you need to do to improve, and like I said before, there’s been weeks where I can put some of the responsibility on Mike, there’s been some weeks that it ultimately goes on my shoulders, and there’s some weeks where it’s things back at the shop that need to be improved on.
Until we have one specific thing that we need to work on and can identify as a problem, I can’t see changing much. But I feel like we have a good group of guys. I can win a championship with Mike; I really and truly do believe that. But we’ve just got to get our ship righted. It seems like our communication at some point in the year got stale. I felt like we’ve turned that around this last month or so, and we had three good finishes going into the Chase, and of course we had flat tires and a loose wheel the first Chase race. That’s stuff that Mike can’t help. He can’t help those problems that we have. Loudon, New Hampshire, fuel mileage. It’s 50/50. It’s one of those things where maybe I used up too much gas, maybe it was too risky of a call. But either way, it weighs on us equally when we don’t run well. So I’m not going to completely throw him under the bus.(NASCAR Transcript)(9-29-2011)
