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RICHMOND, Va. -- Denny Hamlin is unquestionably the "hometown favorite" whenever the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series rolls into Richmond International Raceway.
This week the Chesterfield, Virginia, native arrives in town having earned the esteemed title of 2016 Daytona 500 winner. So it seems hard to believe that Hamlin's last win at his home track was in 2010. He is an odds-on bet for every Richmond race weekend, with a pole win in 2006 and 2008 and race victories in 2009 and 2010.
And he is fast this weekend.
"I love coming back here and love the race track," Hamlin, 35, said Friday after opening practice. "We got to come here and test about a month or so ago and had a good test. Our cars ran really good here in the fall, which is encouraging and even through the tire change and the aero change, I was pretty happy with it.
"We're looking forward to it. We haven't always run the best here over the last few years, but we're starting to get that back a little bit and really for me it's obviously a whole lot of motivation to come here and run well."
Hamlin will start his No. 11 FedEx Ground Toyota fifth in Sunday's Toyota Owners 400 (1 p.m. ET, FOX, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio), after the grid was set based on opening practice speeds because Friday's qualifying session was rained out. Hamlin was 11th fastest in Saturday's final practice and 14th best for a 10-consecutive lap average.
A good showing here would be encouraging for this year's Daytona 500 winner. Since earning that career-defining trophy and Chase-making victory at Daytona, Hamlin has only two other top-10 finishes -- a pair of third-place finishes back-to-back at Phoenix International Raceway and Auto Club Speedway.
It's been a rocky road of late, with a crash at Martinsville Speedway that gave Hamlin a 39th-place finish and then a mid-pack, 20th-place showing at last week's Bristol Motor Speedway.
"I'd say trying to find ourselves is kind of the word I keep thinking of, but over the last few weeks we've tried a lot of out of the box things," Hamlin said of his season. Sometimes it can hurt momentum.
"... We're here in April now and we've still got months until the playoffs start so I think it's an opportunity for us to work on things and try to get better. Ultimately, the checks don't get written until the end of the year so we need to make sure we're good when it really, really counts."
Acknowledging there have been less-than-steller runs in recent weeks, Hamlin still seemed completely comfortable with the direction of the team and the luxury of being able to think and plan for the postseason because of the Daytona win. And Hamlin's Joe Gibbs Racing team is certainly showing the way.
Three of Gibbs' four drivers have wins already. Reigning Sprint Cup champion Kyle Busch has two and Carl Edwards won just last week.
Hamlin has only one top-10 in his last six races here, but he does not appear too worried. On the contrary, he's in a first-time position of winning right out of the gate and having a chance to experiment and fine-tune for the championship run.
"It's a tough balance because you treat tracks that are in the Chase differently than you would tracks that are not," Hamlin explained.
"Texas, for instance, is in the Chase so we tried something, a direction that we were going to see if that direction was where we need to be when we go back there in the Chase. It was not the right direction, we know that, but the other races, I think you kind of know whether you're going to have a shot to win or not and you adjust accordingly. If you don't, you're more willing to try some things to learn, but you're always out there every race to try to win the race for sure.
"There's some weekends you have a better opportunity than others. We know that our program is very strong on all the race tracks right now so we would definitely like to log some more wins before the race starts because ultimately the further you get into the summer, you want to start building some momentum and get some good things going heading into the Chase."