Hitting to all fields: Final thoughts on Richmond

Pardon me for stealing the title this week from my dear ol' buddy Garry Brown -- who ably pens "Hitting to all fields" on Wednesdays for the print and online issues of The Republican in Springfield, Mass.

But this week, reeling under the weight of more than 850 emails in less than 24 hours -- and a triple-weight of misunderstanding and innuendo -- just had to switch-hit and try to put out the fires with some spray hitting.

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He's going for the win, so get over it

Guys, Saturday night I was writing about less than three laps of balls-out racing. I don't care about what caused the caution, because if it hadn't been Denny Hamlin's tire blowing out, who knows what might have happened?

That's what used to freak me out when I worked in the PR Department at Daytona. The second day of Speedweeks people would come to me and say there was a forecast of rain the day of the Daytona 500. What were we going to do?

Excuse me? That race is literally 10 days away. Trust me, we got a plan -- and if it rains, we'll put it into motion. But I ain't gonna lose sleep for nine nights worrying about what might happen if it rains.

Same thing with races -- until the checkered flag falls, you don't have a winner. These aren't gimmes. And as countless races have shown, anything can happen. We'll never know if Dale Earnhardt Jr. would have won, because stuff happened before the checkered flag came out.

All I have to say about Denny Hamlin is that he was trying to win a race. When and if he felt his tire going down, he was going to try to maintain as much speed as he could to finish as well as he could.

He is not paid to quit, so he was gonna try until the tire blew up -- or he was made to leave the racetrack.

I monitored both his radio and NASCAR Control for a part of the race, but my scanner was inoperable where I was for the end of the race, so I have no idea what was being passed on it -- either between he and his team, or his team and NASCAR.

But I can guarantee you that about every person who is griping over the fact that he happened to be Kyle Busch's teammate are operating from the narrow, hind-sighted perspective of disgruntled Junior fans.

I can about guarantee you no one on either Gibbs team told Hamlin to stop on the track; and I'll equally guarantee you helping his teammate was the least thing on his mind.

As far as the circumstances of Hamlin's role in the finish, that was up to someone else to write about. But I can tell you I certainly would have liked to know what he was thinking when he figuring out he had a tire going flat.

Give it time. I'm sure he'll be asked this weekend in his availability at Darlington. (Continued)