NASCAR star Denny Hamlin offers fascinating insight into JGR-23XI alliance

NASCAR Cup Series star Denny Hamlin has offered a fascinating insight into the technical alliance between Joe Gibbs Racing and 23XI.

Hamlin drives in the No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota in the Cup Series, while he is a co-owner at 23XI alongside Michael Jordan, and the two teams formed a technical partnership way back in 2020, when the latter was founded.

This sees open data sharing between them, and yet, despite that, 23XI has four race victories under its belt so far in 2026, compared to Joe Gibbs Racing's one.

Now, speaking on his Actions Detrimental podcast, Hamlin has revealed that this is because although the data is the same, and that both teams are privy to what the other is doing, they interpret and action things differently, hence they go in their own directions and their results often differ.

Denny Hamlin on JGR-23XI technical alliance

“It starts about a week and a half to two weeks in advance,” Hamlin explained on the podcast when asked at what point the 'ships part' between 23XI and JGR.

“The teams will start coming up with a baseline setup. Like, ‘Here's the general shock, springs, weights of the car that we think is correct’, and then as they run sim and simulation models, it will continue to evolve. As they get more information, it just starts to evolve, and then the drivers send the teams down a certain path of ‘Here is what I want my car to do.’

“And so I think that we probably...I wasn't aware that they were in a different place, like a far different place, a place far, far, away from where we were, until like the weekend.

"But again, we’re all guessing, so maybe we're [looking at 23XI's data and] thinking, 'These guys are crazy, there's no way that's going to work', so I don't know.

"It just happens over time and really, by the middle of the week, the teams have decided where they're going to end up, and at that point, you're just all like, 'We need track data to validate what we think is right or not', and until we get track data, we're all just guessing."

So far, whatever 23XI are doing is clearly working. We are six races into the season, and Tyler Reddick has won four of them in his No. 45 Toyota.

Teammate Bubba Wallace is running very well, too, sitting third in the standings at present.