HOMESTEAD, Fla. -- He arrived in South Florida with a slim 15-point lead in the Chase standings, hoping to bring an end to the unprecedented championship run of Jimmie Johnson and start one of his own.

He left Homestead-Miami Speedway on Sunday night empty-handed as Johnson celebrated a fifth consecutive title.

Yet Denny Hamlin seemed surprisingly upbeat. Despite enduring a day of dramatic highs and lows that ended with Hamlin falling just short of fulfilling his own championship dream, the driver of the No. 11 Toyota for Joe Gibbs Racing chose to stress the positive and look optimistically toward the future.

"It's tough, trust me," Hamlin said, who finished 14th in Sunday's Ford 400 while Johnson ran second to dart past him in the Chase standings. "These years don't come by too often in anyone's career. I was privileged enough to be part of the closest championship in history and give it my best effort, but it wasn't enough. Our car got banged up and we couldn't overcome that."

His car got banged up early, when Hamlin made contact with the No. 16 Ford of Greg Biffle and was sent spinning into the infield grass. The mishap occurred on Lap 23 of the 267-lap event.

"That spin really hurt us," Hamlin said. "It messed up the front splitter and knocked the tow out of the car, and it just didn't drive as well as it did at the beginning. At the beginning, I thought we were in really good shape. Our car was flying through the pack. It was unbelievable -- and then we just had that incident and it kind of took us out of it."

Actually, it didn't right away. Hamlin started 37th and had driven his car up to 24th within the first 15 laps of the race before the accident -- which knocked him back toward the rear of the field again. But Hamlin and crew chief Mike Ford kept battling, getting their car up to seventh at one point and several times moving ahead of both Johnson and Kevin Harvick in the Chase points to rekindle hopes for the championship.

But they made other mistakes, including an incident later when Ford told Hamlin to pit too late and Hamlin could not turn into pit road fast enough -- forcing him to stay out on the track when they had wanted to come in and get fresh tires and fuel.

They also were victimized by poor luck late in the race when Harvick wrecked Kyle Busch, Hamlin's JGR teammate, before a cycle of green-flag pit stops had been completed -- catching Hamlin a lap down briefly to Johnson and basically removing any chance the No. 11 team had of capturing the title.

"I thought [Busch] got wrecked by the 29, so that was very frustrating. That caused Denny to go a lap down," said J.D. Gibbs, president of JGR. "That was disappointing -- because you kind of know you aren't making that back up unless you get some kind of caution. And we didn't get it. That's part of the deal. I think we'll learn from it all and grow, and we'll move on."

Even though Harvick finished third in Sunday's race, Hamlin was able to finish second in the season point standings by passing several cars toward the end to pull back ahead of Harvick for the year. Hamlin ended up 39 points behind Johnson and just two ahead of Harvick, who entered the race third in the standings and remained there in the end.

Hamlin, meanwhile, refused to be too downhearted about what slipped away and attempted to stress the positive aspects of what arguably was a breakthrough season for him. He finished with a series-high eight race wins.

As he crossed the finish line, Hamlin told his team on the radio: "I appreciate your guys' efforts all year long. This is only going to make us stronger."

Ford replied: "10-4 on that. We'll kick their butts next year."

That remains to be seen, but both Hamlin and Gibbs said they firmly believe they will be able to build on what they started this season. They realize that in losing their lead, however slim, the No. 11 guys became the first team to do so after leading the Chase coming into either of the past two races since NASCAR instituted their playoff-style format in 2004.

"It's going to be fuel for me," Hamlin said. "I'm just going to try to get better. There are things that I can improve on as a driver. I've got to work on qualifying. I'll study that in the offseason. I've got to work on my outright speed on the restarts. Those are things I've got to get better at.

"As a team, I'll debrief with them and tell them the things that I feel like our cars need to be to be better in the future. I can assure you we're going to hold our heads high because we came close this year. We had a great year. We were just a little short in the end."

Gibbs said he expects to keep the No. 11 team fully intact for the 2011 season. Only he said he thinks it will be even stronger next season.

"Hopefully we learned some stuff this year that we can apply for next year," he said. "I think it's going to be the same group of guys. It's the same team that's been together for a while now -- and I think now they kind of know when to push and when to kind of take what's given you. I look forward to next year. Unfortunately, it's going to seem like a real long time before we can get back to here next year.

"I think the encouraging thing is we've got a lot to work with here with Denny and Mike and the whole team -- when you watched them do what they did all year long. Jimmie Johnson is going to be hard to beat. That's not going to change next year. You've just got to learn to control what you can, and I think our guys will do an even better job of that next year.

"We didn't make many mistakes this year, but we made a few. Hopefully next year we'll make even fewer."