NASCAR In Michigan: Denny Hamlin Likes Winning Without The Best Car, J.D. Gibbs Talks Oil Pans

This weekend’s Heluva Good! Sour Cream Dips 400 came down to a late race caution and threw fuel mileage out the window.Denny Hamlin’s pit crew got him off pit road first and the Joe Gibbs Racing driver finished the job and scored his first win of the 2011 season.

Here is what a few of the drivers had to say following Sunday’s race:

Denny Hamlin (on success at Michigan): “We were truly dominant one year ago in this race. We were a second-to-third place car. In the fall, we finished second. But today we actually were a little worse. But we got a win. That’s very uplifting for me, is to win when you don’t necessarily have the best car all day, but you have the car good at the end when it really counts.”

Denny Hamlin (on points situation): “My goal is still to get in the top five in points. If I wouldn’t have dug us such a big hole at the beginning of the year, we really could be possibly fighting for trying to lead the points going into the Chase. But we just started so far behind, it’s going to be tough to do that.

“My realistic goal is top five in points, don’t have to worry about any kind of wild cards once we get to Richmond.”

J.D. Gibbs (on oil pan issues): “For us, the oil pan thing ultimately was our responsibility to get – when it says things approved by NASCAR, every piece has to be approved by NASCAR. A lot of times we bring stuff to the track. They’ll say, ‘Hey, run it this week, don’t bring it back, make these changes to it.’ Our fault was thinking we would have that conversation. When we got here, they didn’t like it. I think they thought it was a different issue than it actually wound up being.

“The reality of it is it was our fault for not bringing it to them and laying it out. It’s a good lesson learned.”

J.D. Gibbs (on interest in free agent Carl Edwards): “We learned over the years, probably when we started the 11 car, the FedEx team, we learned some good lessons. Unless you have all those parts together – a sponsor, the right driver and team – don’t do it.

“We’re not in any hurry to do it. Carl is a gifted driver. He’s doing great where he is. From our standpoint, we’re going to focus on Denny, Joey (Logano) and Kyle (Busch). When we get that going right, we can worry about other stuff in the future. Right now that’s all we’re kind of focused on.”

Matt Kenseth (on fueling issues): “You try to not get too frustrated because it is a team effort and I made tons of mistakes so you try not to get too frustrated but it is at least the third time we haven’t gotten full of fuel, or the fourth time or something like that. We recovered at Texas, but not at Charlotte – which cost us a win. We did it again here today and got lucky to get a caution so it didn’t cost us, but it could have. We had a slow pit stop that put us behind. That was hard to overcome. I am happy we got second.”

Kyle Busch (on falling back on the final restart): “I was just a little bit ahead of Matt. When I saw Matt start taking off, I took off. I guess I took off pretty good. I didn’t spin my tires at all. I was too far ahead of him. I didn’t know how that was going to look in NASCAR’s eyes. I tried to back up a little bit, not beat him too bad from the start/finish line.

“Once I slowed my momentum down, the herd was coming. I had to let them go by me, regather, get my momentum built back up in turns one and two, go back after it.”

Tony Stewart (on restarts): “I’m glad we didn’t have too many restarts because everybody drove like idiots today. I lost a lot of respect for a lot of drivers out there.”

AJ Allmendinger (on Chase chances): “Points don’t matter right now. We have to get better. We aren’t a Chase team right now. Points, to me, obviously you want to score every point you can, but we need to be better before we worry about making the Chase. Today was a big step. We were never really good here and we were a top-five car all day. Thirteenth sucks in the end compared to what we had, but I am proud of what we did today instead of the points.”