Hamlin: Win in hand played role in Bristol decision

With one victory already in the bank this season and his place in the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup playoffs virtually secure, Hamlin joined his Joe Gibbs Racing team in making the prudent call to heed the painful warnings of neck spasms during a rain-induced red flag and sit out the grueling 400-plus-lap remainder of last Sunday’s Food City 500 in Support of Steve Byrnes and Stand Up To Cancer. Nearly a full week later, Hamlin says he’s ready to roll at his home track, Richmond International Raceway, for the long haul of Sunday’s Toyota Owners 400 (1 p.m. ET, FOX). And he romped to an XFINITY Series victory here Friday night as he led 248 of 250 laps in the ToyotaCare 250.

“Yeah, I’m 100 percent for sure,” Hamlin said after claiming the second starting spot in Friday’s Coors Light Pole Qualifying. “I thought I was really 100 percent probably on Tuesday, but just had something pop out of place and it affected the muscles in my upper back and kind of went to the back of my head. Unfortunately, I just couldn’t move my head. I couldn’t even look in the mirror, so luckily we had that caution.

“For myself, it was — given the format and the points reset and everything — we do have a win — it all did play a factor in obviously getting out, but I would not have been a contender for sure if I chose to continue to run all 500 laps. It would have been an ugly race, so I just thought the better thing to do to make sure — given that I had back problems in the past, I didn’t know what it was, so I didn’t want to chance anything and make it worse and then not be 100 percent here. I thought it was best to sit it out and be 100 percent when we got to Richmond and here we are.”

Though Joe Gibbs Racing development driver Erik Jones filled in and wheeled the car to a 26th-place finish, Hamlin received credit for the results since he started the race. After receiving treatment on his neck, Hamlin proclaimed himself race-ready by midweek ahead of the third short-track event of the season.

It wasn’t the first instance where Hamlin was presented with a health situation and a difficult decision to make. Last season, Hamlin withdrew with vision problems barely an hour before the green flag at Auto Club Speedway after a sliver of sheet metal from Saturday practices stuck in his eye. After receiving an exemption for his missed start, Hamlin prevailed later in the spring at Talladega Superspeedway to clinch his Chase berth.

Though the circumstances were different, Hamlin said in both cases, the new format’s nuances made the decision not to play hurt that much easier.

“Yeah, I think it does change things for sure and it’s not anyone taking advantage of the rule — it’s people doing the right thing,” Hamlin said. “I think that drivers have raced with injuries in the past and toughed it out, but we’re running speeds faster than we ever have been and hitting walls faster and harder than we ever have been. I didn’t want to take a chance on getting in a wreck and I was already in bad shape, so for me knowing I had a win, absolutely, call up somebody else to come in this thing and do a better job than what I can. It’s different obviously had we not — we’d already started the race. It’s not like — I probably still would have got out even if I didn’t have a race win simply because I knew I wasn’t going to be very competitive that day, but I think that this rule was set out to protect us from injuries and it’s done its job.

“We missed a race last year at California with an eye injury and won a race and put ourselves in there, so that’s what this thing is all about and I think that just like any other sport, they’re paying more attention to concussions and injuries and all that stuff. It’s better to be safe than sorry because we’re seeing now that past injuries are starting to rear its head in some of these people physically.”

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