No worries from JGR after Denny Hamlin's stuck throttle

To win the NASCAR Cup Series championship in less than two weeks, Denny Hamlin and the Joe Gibbs Racing No. 11 team will need to be perfect at Phoenix Raceway.

On one hand, they executed last week at Las Vegas Motor Speedway to become the first driver to lock into the final four but this past month has also seen the team experience power steering and stuck throttles at Kansas and Talladega respectively.

It's also an easy narrative to latch onto this weekend because it's the one-year anniversary of a stuck throttle in practice at Martinsville that derailed Hamlin's efforts to win his way into the final four then.

That was the result of a freak accident, a piece of chunked rubber working its way into the throttle body, and locking his car into full song.

To wit, Joe Gibbs Racing competition director Chris Gabehart, his former crew chief, says he’s not worried even if he is taking it seriously, when asked if there was a quality control issue.

“No, there's a lot more to the story than that,” Gabehart said. “I think we already have a good understanding of what happened there. We're not going to get any into any details but it is a little bit of a freak instance that we need to get to the bottom of, for sure. I don't want to take it lightly, but it was not something as simple as a bolt coming loose or something like that.”

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