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NASCAR CUP SERIES: DRYDENE 311

August 22, 2020

Chris Gabehart

Dover, Delaware

THE MODERATOR: We are joined by our raceâ€‘winning crew chief, Chris Gabehart, of the No. 11 FexEx Office Toyota.
We'll go straight to questions.

Q. Loose wheel on the 11 car. Just one single lug nut or something more?
CHRIS GABEHART: Yeah, I wasn't at the car, so I don't know. As far as I know it was just one. Again, I wasn't there when all that went down, so hard to say.

Q. In a doubleheader weekend, how much time do you give yourself to celebrate the win before turning your attention to tomorrow?
CHRIS GABEHART: The focus is always on the next race. Certainly this one will be shortâ€‘lived. For me personally Phoenix was probably my most favorite win by a mile. I don't know if I can ever beat that one. But this one ranks up there pretty high. This is a track that Denny has never won at. To sweep the three stages, we had a rough pit stop on the last yellow flag, to have to pass both of our teammates to get the win at a track that Denny has never won at, Martin is so good at, is gratifying. Super proud of Denny's effort there and all of the 11 team.

Q. Denny said you sent a text message to him last night that you were confident you were going to win today. What made you so confident?
CHRIS GABEHART: The last time we were here we hit on a pretty good package with Denny, something that he really liked the way the car drove. Then they went and made a small aero package change for us. Actually huge (smiling).
I was fairly confident if we could get the balance back right that the package we hit on was something we could still sort of transfer over to this aero package. It takes a lot of work to get it right. These guys nailed it. He was still really happy with the car.
Fortunately I was able to live up to that because I felt really good about it. He went out there and proved me right.

Q. With the total elimination of practice for the rest of the season, how important has simulation work been?
CHRIS GABEHART: The question of the black art.
It is vital. It will only continue to get more important. Yeah, so long as we're not practicing, you take Denny Hamlin out of it. What we have is great notes, a great chemistry, solid communication. We've developed an understanding of what he needs.
But leading up to the race, I get none of that out of him. It's all leaning on notes and simulation. When you make a major change to the aero package, like coming here, you don't get to lean on your driver at all in practice, that's a situation.
I'm just so proud of my engineers, Sam, Ryan, everybody on this race team. It really can't be understated just how different this aero package is from the only experience I've had with Denny at Dover. To be able to get all the knobs turned just right to produce a car with that kind of speed and consistency is something I'm really proud of.

Q. Denny said the goal this year was 10 wins. He revealed that. Why was that the goal?
CHRIS GABEHART: Well, if he let the cat out of the bag, then I can go ahead and say now you know how important Bristol and Indy was to us, right? Those were two we had and got away from us.
10 is just a nice round number. It's something that's hard to do. If you look back to the last time it was done â€‘ I'll let you look it up, Bob, I know how you love stats â€‘ it has not been done any time recently. You look at the names of the guys on that list, not only was it done a long time ago, it was done in kind of a different era where the rules book is concerned. It's an elite list of guys.
I just have that much confidence in Denny's ability. I have Joe Gibbs Racing and FedEx, this team behind me. There's no reason to set the bar low. I think we're capable of winning every week. It's extremely hard. There are a ton of good teams out there that are just at capable.
For me, there's no reason to sugarcoat it. When you have all these resources behind you, why not set the bar for the moon? That's what we've done.

Q. You have 35 Playoff points.
CHRIS GABEHART: 37. I count those (laughter).

Q. Are you close to what your goal was prior to the season for Playoff points?
CHRIS GABEHART: Again, to be honest with you, the Playoff goal was less â€‘â€‘ the Playoff point goal was less of a focus than performing to our capability, racking up the wins. Really focusing on a weekâ€‘toâ€‘week mentality of doing our job to the best of our ability, feeling like the Playoff points would follow if we did that.
I would say yeah, we certainly have more than we had last year at this time. Right now if we were to award the regularâ€‘season points, we'd be at 47 I think. There's nothing that's a given. The second round is going to be brutal. You guys are going to enjoy it. I feel second best in Playoff points, really good, yeah.

Q. How amazing is it for not just your team but for the other guys to have a strong day like you did going into Sunday?
CHRIS GABEHART: It's my job to focus on Denny and the 11 team, FedEx, Toyota, JGR, like I do every week.
Let's be real. JGR has a tremendous fleet of drivers. We all have the same resources and equipment, so we all have great resources and equipment. It's no surprise. We're certainly capable of it.
The feat is not an easy one, so we're all definitely proud of it. When you look at Dover, JGR has a great history here. Martin is outstanding here at Dover. Dover never has been a track that Denny really likes a lot. Again, over the last several races we've gotten better. I feel like his confidence is certainly where it should be now.
But, yeah, these drivers are tremendous at Joe Gibbs Racing, so are the resources. Gratifying but not surprising.
THE MODERATOR: Chris, thanks for joining us. We'll let you get back to the car to get ready for tomorrow. Good luck when we do this all over again tomorrow.
CHRIS GABEHART: Sounds good. Thanks.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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