Hamlin again has COT to beat, with nothing to show (cont'd)

However, try as he might, he couldn't chase down Gordon and Stewart over the closing laps, settling for another close-but-no-victory speech.

"We had to battle back there and I'm kind of tired of battling back every single week to whatever finish," Hamlin said. "I wish nothing would happen and we'd go an entire race without problems. We're going to move on and hopefully go to Talladega and try to win that one."

Despite rallying from deep in the pack, Hamlin wasn't complimentary about NASCAR's new design, which made its mile debut at Phoenix.

"To be as nice as I can, it's just frustrating," Hamlin said. "It's hard for me to complain. People will say, 'But you went from the back to the front.' Yeah, it took us 300 laps to do it when it shouldn't have.

"Our car was just that much better than everyone else's. It shouldn't have taken that long. We got some long runs in there that played in our benefit, but I don't know how we're going to run these cars on bigger tracks without changes."

Hamlin said the biggest problem with the COT was the lack of downforce.

"They built these cars to punch a bigger hole in the air," he said. "These cars have half as much downforce and twice as much rear so it already doesn't have front grip. Then you have a car that's punching a bigger hole in the air in front of it. That means even less air gets to the front end so you've got an eighth of the downforce you had before.

"There were instances out there where I'd be a half-second faster than a guy. I'd get within 10 car-lengths and automatically be slower. That was really frustrating as a driver. There's just not a whole lot we can do as drivers. We're at the mercy of track position right now."

What bothered Hamlin the most might have been how badly he wanted to win the race for residents of his native Virginia, still reeling from the events at Blacksburg in the past week.

"I wanted to bring back a win for everyone at Virginia Tech. I was trying," he said. "There was nothing else than I could have done. I'm so upset that I've got a great car every single week and we just can't capitalize and get a win."