CORAL GABLES, Fla. -- Denny Hamlin climbed to the podium first for Thursday's championship contenders press conference at the posh Hyatt Regency Hotel.

He was followed quickly by Kevin Harvick, but then the two had to wait a bit for four-time defending Cup Series champion Jimmie Johnson -- who was fashionably late.

“

Well, for us, I mean, we have nothing to lose. This guy does.

”

-- JIMMIE JOHNSON on Denny Hamlin

"Sorry. Had to go to the bathroom," Johnson said as he finally sat down to Hamlin's right.

Perhaps. Or maybe it was a little gamesmanship on Johnson's part, forcing Hamlin to sweat a bit longer under the bright television lights that flooded the stage. It was hard to tell.

What wasn't difficult to discern was that while Hamlin heads into Sunday's Ford 400 as the leader in the Chase, he clearly was caught in the middle during Thursday's event. With Harvick sitting to his left, Hamlin fielded a fairly constant barrage of friendly verbal barbs from his fellow championship hopefuls -- but mostly Johnson -- as the news conference unfolded.

At one point a perspiring Hamlin admitted, "This has been one of the most awkward 30 minutes I've been through, to be honest with you."

And he still had another 30 minutes to go -- plus an additional breakout interview session where he would face even more questions from the media. Hamlin, however, recovered nicely and by the time the formal news conference ended, he even seemed to be enjoying the back-and-forth verbal jousting with Johnson and Harvick.

File one more piece of evidence in the Maturation of Denny Hamlin file. His improvement in that critical area is why Hamlin likes his chances to turn away the championship charges of Johnson and Harvick come Sunday, and a large reason why it's looking less and less like he's going to suffer some sort of mental letdown that might hand it away to one of the others.

It was a solid performance that made his mini-meltdown following last Sunday's race in Phoenix seem like it's definitely in Hamlin's rear-view mirror. After leading a race-high 190 laps in that race, Hamlin was forced to pit for fuel toward the end -- while Johnson and Harvick stayed out on the track.

Johnson ended up finishing fifth and Harvick sixth, while Hamlin limped home in a disappointing 12th. That enabled Johnson to close the gap in the Chase standings to 15 points heading into Homestead and kept Harvick in the hunt, too, at just 46 behind.

"It was tough during the race because laps were winding down and I was sitting in the car thinking, 'I'm not seeing anyone else on pit road.' I was starting to think, 'What's going on? Did we just beat ourselves? Did we just kill ourselves?' When I crossed the [start/finish] line, I didn't know if we were 12th or 25th. I just knew no one else had pitted, so you look at the scoreboard and then I just got so pissed off," Hamlin said.

"I was thinking, 'You just beat those guys all day long and had a chance to end this thing, basically. Then something crazy happened and you just let them back in.' And it's tough to let back in a guy who has won four championships in a row and a guy who is probably more hungry than the rest of us."

However, Hamlin said Thursday that it didn't take him long to forget about it and move on. (Continued)