Did adopting a puppy lead to major NASCAR star slump?

Denny Hamlin found a stray puppy earlier this summer at World Wide Technology Raceway, was convinced by his daughters to keep it, and his season has gone downhill ever since.

Hamlin enters the final race of the first round of the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs at a six point deficit to the elimination cutline.

Hamlin finished second that day at ‘Gateway’ but it’s also where his season was completely derailed. There have been just four top-10s over the following 13 races. There was also a devastating engine seal penalty from NASCAR that ended up costing Hamlin around 10 bonus points, enough to have made a difference entering Saturday’s Bristol Night Race.

Despite it all, they were still amongst the championship favorites two weeks ago.

However, the playoffs began with Hamlin finishing 24th and 23rd respectively with no margin for error after said penalty.

So apparently, there’s only one solution left in advance of this weekend in the eyes of Joe Gibbs Racing No. 11 crew chief Chris Gabehart. Re-home Lulu the puppy.

Maybe just this week. For the data point.

“[Gabehart] definitely wants to explore removing the dog off the premises for one week and see what happens,” Hamlin said on this week’s Actions Detrimental Podcast.

Gabehart isn’t a ‘luck guy’ but instead believes tremendously in data and analytics… which has also not been kind to Lulu.

“He doesn’t believe in luck a whole lot,” Hamlin said of Gabehart. “He believes in being prepared and things like that, and I agree with him. But holy cow, the results are not good with Lulu so far.”

Hamlin had an 11.47 average finish in the 10 races before acquiring Lulu and a 20.38 in the 13 races since.

Gabehart even called over Hamlin and content specialist Jared Allen after their latest disaster of a race and deadpanned, “someone has to take that dog.”

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