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MARTINSVILLE, Va. — Denny Hamlin‘s car sustained slight damage before his third-place finish in Sunday’s race at Martinsville Speedway.
Hamlin’s Joe Gibbs Racing No. 11 Toyota sat on the grid before Sunday’s Goody’s Fast Relief 500 with wrinkled sheet metal just behind the left-front tire. NBC Sports reported that the car had fallen off a jack stand during pre-race tuning.
But that wasn’t the only hiccup in Hamlin’s pre-race routine: A tractor put a golf cart carrying Hamlin and a few others in quite the precarious position.
“I thought it was a great start to my day, getting wiped out on the golf cart and my car falling off that jack,” Hamlin said sarcastically of his bizzare pre-race incidents.
“… The tractor that pulls the trailer onto the track just wiped us out. I jumped off the cart because I saw it was coming, the other guys stayed on and (were) going to take a ride. But it cleaned us out pretty good … it just destroyed it.”
It reminded Hamlin of another large truck.
“Yeah, you ever seen BigFoot and those cars they set up for him to jump over?” Hamlin said, referring to the Monster Truck. “We were the car.”
Despite Hamlin’s poor luck before the 500-lapper, he heads into next weekend’s Texas Motor Speedway race (2 p.m. ET, NBC, PRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) second on the Chase Grid — only behind race victor Jimmie Johnson.
MORE: Hamlin frustrated following on-track incident with Johnson