Denny Hamlin’s championship hopes have faded once again. The No. 11 Toyota Camry has been on a stretch of bad runs with mechanical gremlins. Hamlin had to deal with a clutch issue at Kansas, and then in Martinsville, the engine concerns forced him out of the race. While those issues didn’t spoil his march to Phoenix, today’s issues just made his path more challenging.

Starting the race weekend, the JGR driver complained of having issues with the clutch on the No. 11 Progressive Camry. The #11 team tried what they could in the short span of time and got the car back running. Hamlin getting the pole was a positive sight, and everyone thought the issues had been resolved. But after the green flag dropped in Phoenix, the #11 team radio buzzed with a similar complaint.

“Clutch Pedal is long,” Hamlin sent this message to his crew chief, Chris Gayle. The stage one run didn’t prove to be a challenge, but William Byron did overtake the lead. Then came the second stage, and this is where things started to go downhill after a couple of pit stops.

The thing with Hamlin’s clutch was that he could make speed and maintain position on the racetrack. However, when he came to pit road, he had to engage his clutch, and this is where the driver felt the most vulnerable. After the second pit stop cycle and maintaining his lead in the race, the veteran driver radioed in again.

“It’s not far from not engaging,” Hamlin said to his crew chief. It literally meant that if he kept on engaging the clutch in the manner he was, his car could get stalled on the pit road. Or even worse, he could lose his clutch mechanism altogether.

It looks like Joe Gibbs Racing cars are falling apart at the worst possible moment. Hamlin’s teammate, Chase Briscoe, had a flat tire during a yellow, and he was forced to give up his track position and head for the pit road. But a simple tire change wasn’t going to fix all the issues on the No. 19 car.

Briscoe complained about major vibrations on his race car, and in a matter of a few laps, he was running at the tail end of the field. From running inside the top 10 to surviving to be in the race. JGR has had a tough few weeks with the mechanical issues, and it sure played a role in what was the biggest race of this season. Had it not been for the mechanical gremlins, who knows, Hamlin would’ve been lifting the Bill France trophy.