Hamlin returns to chase the victory that got away (cont'd)

How much does Richmond mean to Hamlin? Consider that he's won four times on NASCAR's premier circuit, and yet counts the Nationwide victory at Richmond last spring as the biggest of his career. Every trip back to Richmond means family and friends at the race track, and charity events like his celebrity race Thursday night at Southside Speedway, one of the area short tracks where he competed before Dean's contacts and a lot of luck earned him a chance with the Gibbs organization. A homecoming like that always carries expectations. But pressure? Dean doesn't think so.

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It's just one of those points in a driver's career where he says that, 'This is the race that this track owes me.'

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DENNY HAMLIN

"We always think that when people put pressure on themselves that it's a negative thing. I think he is motivated by it. I think he is inspired by it," Dean said. "But again, people always take that as negative. 'You put too much pressure on yourself,' that's the expression. Any pressure is too much pressure, so it's a negative thing. For Denny, it's not. He's not going to put pressure on himself that he has to do this or he has to do that. When he's in that race car, I promise you, how he drives that race car and how he handles that car during the race will have nothing to do with pressure. He's just too even."

Dean believes that even temperament -- an example of which, he said, was Hamlin's demeanor after Jimmie Johnson muscled past him in the final laps to win March 29 at Martinsville, another Virginia track -- will help him put the heartbreak of last season behind him. Hamlin recalls it like it was yesterday, remembering how he expected other drivers to eventually catch up, how surprised he was that his car was getting better while everyone else's was only maintaining. After the last pit stop with 30 to go, his car was better than it had been all night. He started pulling away from the field again, and even allowed his thoughts to drift to Victory Lane.

"I thought, 'This is it,'" Hamlin remembered. "At this point, I'm thinking, 'What am I going to feel like when I get out of the race car? What are my emotions going to be like? What am I going to feel? What am I going to say?' Those things run through your head while you're out there on the race track. It doesn't take but that split instance in that corner, you feel the right-front fall down, and it goes from joy to beating the steering wheel up."

Going through a corner, Hamlin said, he could feel air pressure in the right-front tire going down, and knew he was finished. He had some fleeting hope of a caution, but knew his chances of winning were doomed either way. Nobody else needed to pit. He was left to limp around the track until the tire eventually failed.

"It was just frustrating," he said. "You can't describe the emotion. It's just one of those points in a driver's career where he says that, 'This is the race that this track owes me.' This is the point where I say that this race track owes me, and that was the one for Richmond."

No question, the experience of last spring still eats at him. But once Hamlin slides behind the wheel Saturday night, Dean believes, all of those thoughts will fade away.

"I would tell you that from the time they say, 'Gentlemen start your engines' until the checkered flag waves, what happened last year won't have one single thing to do with any one corner at any single point in the race. It won't have any effect on him at all. None at all," Dean said. "Now, how he thinks about it after he gets out of the car privately to himself, or before he gets in the car, might be a little bit different. But I'll guarantee you it will not affect his performance in that race car, and it won't impact one single decision he makes when he turns that wheel."