After a weekend full of rain-interrupted racing, Denny Hamlin and the #11 FedEx Racing Team posted a well-deserved 11th-place finish in the rain-shortened Coca-Cola 600.  The noon start on Monday meant the teams faced conditions almost exactly opposite of those they had prepared for.  That didn’t keep the #11 team from running in the top-ten throughout the race and only falling outside at the end when pit stops decided the final order.  All told, there were three long delays for rain before NASCAR finally pulled the plug on the race after 227 laps and a two hour rain delay.  The finish keeps Hamlin in fifth place in the Sprint Cup standings heading to Dover.


Hamlin, Gibbs Make Special Delivery in D.C

Driver Denny Hamlin and team owner Joe Gibbs will visit Washington D.C. on Thursday to deliver a custom designed Disaster Response Unit to the D.C-area Salvation Army.  The vehicle, used in disaster situations to provide food and water to as many as 2,500 people per day, is one of 12 that FedEx has donated to cities both inside the U.S. and around the world.  FedEx has worked with the Salvation Army for years and is uniquely qualified to aide in disaster situations delivering goods and services to affected areas.


Hamlin at Dover International Speedway

This weekend will mark Hamlin's seventh career Cup start at Dover International and he’ll be looking to overcome past frustrations at the one-mile track. On the heels of his best finish at the Monster Mile in June of 2007, Hamlin and the team have suffered misfortune in three consecutive starts since. In Sept. of 2008, Hamlin qualified in the top-three, and was running in the top-ten before the crew discovered oil on the inside of the rear wheel during a lap 144 stop.  It was determined that a crack in a fitting on the rear-end cooler was the culprit and, after slowing the leak, Hamlin was sent back on to the track but, unfortunately, the fix was only temporary.  Hamlin was running in the top ten on lap 244 when he lost the drive shaft and gear and finished 38th.  In June of 2008, Hamlin suffered a DNF when he was collected in the large, multi-car wreck that red-flagged the race on lap 16.  Hamlin posted a finish of 38th in the Chase race in the fall 2007 after contact forced him from the lead, where he had led 61 laps, and into the garage for repairs. 


Dover Chassis – JGR 222 & 204

JGR 222 will carry the FedEx Office livery this weekend at Dover.  This car posted a second-place finish at Bristol in March.  It posted third-place finishes at both Auto Club and Indy during the 2008 season.  204 will serve in backup duty.


FedEx Office Store Group #898 “Along for the Ride” in Dover: In recognition of their commitment to superior customer service, FedEx Office store group #898, located in Frederick, Md. will be featured on the wing cap of the #11 FedEx Office Toyota this weekend at Dover International Speedway.  


HAMLIN CONVERSATION - DOVER


Dover is tricky place – what do you expect going back there?

”I look at Dover as a faster version of Bristol.  That’s about the best comparison you can make – and we are taking our Bristol car there this weekend for that reason.  Dover is a really unique place - from the surface to the banking to the pit road.  It’s a unique challenge for the teams to go there but it’s a place where we’ve run pretty well in the past even though our results don’t show that. Dover is a physical track that tests you in the driver’s seat with steep banking and really severe transitions in and out of the corners but it does give you a lot of passing opportunities.  There are multiple grooves there and you can find a place to make your car work. Ideally you can run the bottom and pass that way.  If you have the car right, you normally have to take your time, wait and find a place where you are better and make the pass.  There is so much load on the car so the cars aren’t as aero-dependant as they are at other fast tracks so you can run behind someone and not lose the front end.  That makes for really good racing.  We need to turn around our fortunes at Dover, not only this week but looking ahead also.”


You’re halfway to the Chase cutoff now – Are you happy with the performance of the #11 team?

“We are happy.  We feel like we’ve been competitive in really every race and on all the different kinds of tracks we go to.  That was one of our main goals coming into this season.  We knew where our weaknesses were and everyone worked hard to address them.  To be fifth in points now is pretty good considering we feel like we’ve not yet performed our best.  No time to rest though, we have a long summer ahead of us and we need to keep working.  We need to keep improving at the same or rate or even quicker than the competition if we want to be there at the end.”