LOUDON, N.H. – Woulda, coulda, shoulda.
That was the refrain from the tune Denny Hamlin was singing on pit road after Sunday’s Foxwoods Resort Casino 301. Sounds like a country song.
Hamlin ferociously battled Kevin Harvick on the final lap, working the grooves to find a weakness and force the No. 4 Ford to make a mistake, but the 2014 Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series champ never wavered. The Joe Gibbs Racing driver was able to rub fenders with Harvick but ultimately couldn’t find an opening to race his own No. 11 side-by-side to the finish.
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Hamlin intricately ran through everything he wished he could have done differently for reporters after the race.
“I stayed right with him the entire run … I was just so tight behind him and couldn’t break that barrier,” Hamlin said. “He made one mistake … I don’t know if it was a mistake, but he made a lane choice coming to the white (flag) into Turn 3 and he went low and I knew right then I was going to have a monster run coming off this corner and (thinking) ‘what do I do with it?’ My first instinct was to move him up one lane. I didn’t want to completely screw him and knock the crap out of him like (he did to Kyle Busch) last year. I just wanted to get position, and I got position and then I’m like, ‘that didn’t work.’
“Neither one of us wanted to lead (on the final lap). We were going off Turn 2 and we were both letting off the gas. Nobody wanted to be in front of the other, and I thought about where I wanted to be and I thought I wanted to be behind him but I should have kept the bottom and then forced him up like he forced me up off Turn 4. If I could have done it all over again, I would have done that, but I tried to give myself a fair shot in Turns 3 and 4 and run the top and really get a good run and position on him but I should have known he was going to cut that run off and turn right on us. I should have known that.”
It’s particularly interesting Hamlin chose to run the finish cleanly, when he likely could have gone the dirty route – “Oh, for sure,” he said – to punt Harvick and take the checkered.
A year ago, Harvick moved Hamlin’s teammate Busch out of the way in the closing laps to take the win. Hamlin certainly recalls that but elected to show his fellow longtime veteran the respect he felt was warranted by not using him up.
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“I made sure that A, I didn’t wreck him and B, I didn’t knock him out of the groove,” Hamlin said. “I wanted to give him a fair shot to get his car back in order and let’s race for it.
“When we were side-by-side through the center of 1 and 2, I should have drove straight, knocked him up the groove and then he would’ve been in the stuff and it would’ve been over with. That’s just not the way I want to do it. We’re two veteran guys, we know how to race these things clean and let’s just figure it out. At the end, he got the best of us. I’ve got a lot of respect for Kevin and so I did the best I could to be as clean as I could.”
The finish was still mesmerizing – the second straight week leaders were beating and banging to the finish line — but, perhaps, it could have been even closer had Hamlin done things differently.
“I would’ve liked to have drag-raced side-by-side to the line there, because that’s what was going to happen … but he didn’t want to find out,” Hamlin said. “He ended that discussion pretty early.”
In the end, it was Harvick who picked up his fourth win at the “Magic Mile,” and Hamlin left to worship the post-race inspection process.
Praying to the tech gods right now.
— Denny Hamlin (@dennyhamlin) July 21, 2019
On a related note, the No. 4 Ford passed post-race tech with no issues.