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TALLADEGA, Ala. — Denny Hamlin stood by his No. 11 FedEx Toyota on Talladega Superspeedway pit road Sunday afternoon looking as relieved as he did happy with his third-place finish.
It was among the most important third-place finishes this year’s Daytona 500 winner has ever secured – and a mere .006 seconds ahead of fourth-place Kurt Busch.
It was the difference in Hamlin advancing to the next round of the Chase — and he secured the playoff pass by virtue of winning a tiebreaker with Richard Childress Racing‘s Austin Dillon.
“We had something go our way,” Hamlin said smiling. “One time something went our way and we battled at the line with the 41 (Kurt Busch). I’m just so happy. I just never really had good Chase fortune to be honest with you. I’ve been doing this 11 years and very, very few times has the dice fallen well for us. Today was one of those times.
“Today, we didn’t back in with a 15th-place finish. We had to root and gouge against guys absolutely committed to each other. That’s what I’m most proud of — getting a good finish when the odds were really stacked against us.”
Although Hamlin ran among the front half of the field for much of the race, his three Joe Gibbs Racing teammates, Carl Edwards, Matt Kenseth and Kyle Busch, spent the vast majority of the race in a three-car nose-to-tail draft at the back of the 40-car field. In fact, they finished 28th (Kenseth), 29th (Edwards) and 30th (Busch).
Hamlin was left very much a man on his own mission.
“There’s a certain level of strategy and being smart that goes with any race,” Edwards said. “And this is not the most fun way to race. But our mission is simple here. If it required that we go up to the front and try to win the race, we would do that. You have to balance everything. This is not my first time here. I’m really proud of my group.
“This is the format and we have to do what it takes to get there. … It would have been a lot more fun to have won that race in Kansas and then go up there and push Denny to the win all day. That would have been a lot of fun. But this is a really tough format. And don’t mistake what we did today as being simple or easy. That’s really tough to do and actually, at the end we were at a very high risk.”
Team owner Joe Gibbs said following the race that there was some confusion after the checkered flag and he briefly — albeit mistakenly — thought that Dillon had advanced instead of Hamlin.
“It was nerve-wracking for us, and at the end, it flipped the other way on our board and I thought we came in ninth,” Gibbs said. “I about panicked until I knew what the tiebreaker was. We lost two of our cars in this round last year. The farther you go in this format, everybody’s geared up. You’ve got to try to win a race.”
And, Gibbs reiterated, he was fully committed to the team’s strategy Sunday.
“Everybody talked it over, crew chiefs and everything,” Gibbs said. “I think it was just a strategy we needed to start off with and really depended on how it would go.
“Denny is a great restrictor-plate racer and he got everything he could out of it today.”
Hamlin certainly proved that in his dramatic Daytona 500 victory to start the season. After sub-par showings at Charlotte (30th place) and Kansas (15th place) in this elimination round of NASCAR’s playoffs, he came to Talladega absolutely needing a top-shelf finish.
For much of the day, the points difference between Hamlin and Dillon was negligible. And after all the tough and tight racing, it still was decided on a tiebreaker.
“You know, it’s heartbreaking obviously,” said Dillon, who finished ninth. “You need a spot, and it comes down to three one‑thousandths I think between (us) and the (eighth place) 43-car (Aric Almirola).
“I’m just proud of this team. We made it a full ‘nother round. Thought we were going to make it another one, but it didn’t work out for us. … I don’t think we had it today to really mix it up up front. Might have waited a little too long. We tried to get track position one time, but it didn’t work out. I put my car in the places I thought it would work the best in that last lap and a half. My teammates stuck with me. I’m proud and thankful for them. Just missed it by a spot.”
Hamlin, meanwhile, heads to next week’s race in Martinsville feeling like a very real contender to hoist the season trophy.
He’s won five times on the Martinsville short track, including last spring. He was third in the 2015 Chase race there. He has a pair of wins at Texas, sweeping the 2010 season there. And Hamlin has a win (2012) and two pole-position starts at Phoenix, with a third place effort there this spring.
Should he be among the four drivers deciding the Sprint Cup in the Homestead-Miami Speedway season finale, he also goes there with an enviable record. He was the polesitter there last November and is a two-time winner (2009 and 2013). He has finished among the top 10 in four of the last five races.
“We all know that Martinsville is where I’ve made my career for the most part,” Hamlin said, sizing up his championship chances. “I feel very confident we can go there and do great things. My teammates are all going to be strong there. They were in the spring.
“So, it’s new life for us. We’re on house money at this point. Honestly, the cards were stacked against us before we entered the day, but now we’re moving on and we have a clean slate.”
