Following their championship race clinching victory earlier in the month at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, Denny Hamlin detailed a conversation he had with team owner Joe Gibbs over the eventual decision to pair him with crew chief Chris Gayle.
Hamlin said, and this is in the aftermath of then crew chief Chris Gabehart being elevated to competition director, that he has roughly 24 hours to agree to work with Gayle or the team was going to lose him to another organization.
Ultimately, Hamlin trusted that Gibbs had his best interest at heart, and accepted a pairing that has produced six wins and counting towards that elusive Cup Series championship.
Gayle corroborated that timeline this week.
“In general, I was really close to leaving,” Gayle said on Tuesday during a midweek media teleconference. “I do think, the timeline that everyone has put out there, is correct that I had another offer on the table.
“There was basically a time limit on how long it was going to be available. That’s what created that timeline, that I couldn’t leave someone hanging if that’s what I was going to do.”
Gayle had been paired with Ty Gibbs since their NASCAR Xfinity Series championship run in 2022, and having not had that success together in Cup, saw an opportunity to win races somewhere else.
“Did I want to stay at Joe Gibbs Racing; yes,” Gayle said. “Did I want to be in a more competitive environment where I felt I could help; yes. Was that with the 11 team and Denny? Correct.
“It wasn’t fair to Denny because he didn’t see this coming at all. He doesn’t know everything that’s happening behind the scenes but he got stuck with my escalated timeline that I had that he was either in or out and had 24-48 hours to decide this.
“Ultimately, I don’t think he knew what the correct answer was and I don’t think anyone could know and there isn’t time to gather more information and are you either in or out? Ultimately, he trusted coach and knew he was doing the best he could to pair the right people together and wouldn’t shortchange him.
“That’s not what this move was about. It was about making the entire company better.”
Gayle said there was a conviction that Gayle would seamlessly fit in with the pre-existing 11 team.
“I wanted to stay here for sure,” Gayle said. “But if I wasn’t going to get this opportunity, I was probably going to leave Joe Gibbs Racing.”
This move was announced on the day of the annual NASCAR Awards press conference rotation and Hamlin was very clearly not sure how to feel. In real time, he lamented losing Gabehart as crew chief, and he acknowledged the lack of Cup Series success from Gayle, who had only two wins with Erik Jones to his resume.
And yet, Gayle trusted Hamlin to communicate whatever reservations he might have to him personally, and they very quickly found success.
“To be honest with you, from a personality standpoint, I’m not a ‘rah, rah’ guy,” Gayle said. “I don’t do a lot of talking over the radio. I’m more laid back. So, for me, even Denny and the team, they probably had the same questions that Denny had.
“As an experienced guy that had been through not having the success that he wanted and getting kicked back down to the Xfinity Series, and having great success there, having a good season with Ty three quarters of the way through last year, I felt like I had internal confidence.
“I felt really good about pairing Denny and that team with me. I knew what they could do. I tried not to push too hard. I wasn’t going to come in and ‘rah rah’ Denny into believing in me. That had to slowly happen over time, race-by-race, making good strategy calls and bringing good cars every race.”
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