Third place leaves Hamlin pondering the possibilities (cont'd)

"As soon as we came in and took those tires [on Lap 255] and came out with the lead, it looked like we would just cruise on to the win. But then we had that debris caution [on Lap 297] and that just changed the complexity of the race. After that I had no rear grip whatsoever."

With three cautions in the final 30 laps, Hamlin's car just kept going away from him, but he had nothing but praise for his crew after the race.

"We tried to do the best we could," Hamlin said. "Our car did not like cycles at all. Our car was a long-run car, and it just could never come in. My team gave me the best car they've ever given me here. They gave me an opportunity to win and my pit crew did awesome, we just weren't able to capitalize."

Hamlin's disappointment had a silver lining, though.

Atlanta hasn't been a strong track for the three-year Cup Series star. In six Cup races leading up to Sunday, Hamlin had just one lead-lap finish and an average finish of 19.3 at the 1.5-mile track. His third-place finish is easily his career-best at the track. And while he knows this was a good weekend for him and his race team, it's hard to get past what might have been.

"This has not been my best racetrack by far," Hamlin said. "We've run well here, we've run third to fifth here before, had a car capable of running third to fifth but had issues. We had a power steering failure in the spring where we had a good car. By the stats this is a terrible track for us.

"Obviously it gets you excited. With 60 to go I was thinking, 'Man if this was a track where we were to win -- we definitely didn't put this on our calendar to go out and really have a good shot at winning.' We knew we could run well, but you gotta have a really good car to win here. We had it [Sunday] and we just let it slip. We got beat today."