Denny Hamlin ended up on the pole this weekend at the wreck-filled Cheez-It 355 at Watkins Glen International – the only road course on the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series schedule. Denny Hamlin won the race in the worst pain of his racing career.
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The driver of the No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota took advantage of overdriving mistakes in Turn 1 by race leader Brad Keselowski and Kyle Busch, who was in second place, on a lap 80 restart. Meanwhile the rest of the field self-destructed in their wake.
Keselowski restarted with the lead with 25 laps to go in the 90-lap race, and Busch stalked him in second as the leaders began turning the fastest laps of the race around the 2.45-mile layout with the end in sight.
Because of that, Truex and Keselowski were right behind Hamlin during the final lap.
Truex Jr. was still frustrated even after discussing the incident with Keselowski.
Truex voiced his displeasure during the cool-down lap by door-slamming Keselowski on several occasions before parking it on pit road. Having already committed to the turn, Keselowski got into the rear of Truex and spun him. More importantly, he felt vindication after blowing his chance to win on the Sonoma Raceway road course in June when he made a mistake on the last lap, allowing Tony Stewart to claim a surprise victory.
Hamlin admitted he was suffering from back problems but still managed to muscle his way to the win.
“No doubt if it was Friday or Saturday, no question I wouldn’t have turned one lap today. This was by far the worst pain-wise I’ve had to go through”.
Hamlin who has driven with torn ACLs in both knees in the past, texted his crew chief Mike Wheeler the news, and an emergency plan was put in place to put Xfinity Series Chase grid leader Erik Jones in the No. 11 FedEx auto if necessary. I nearly want to say if he knew he didn’t have a winning auto, he might do something different. It was like, you know, not something you really want to hear.
Logano said it was the case all day on Sunday. He said the Gibbs team made changes since Sonoma that improved his feel for the vehicle under braking. Stewart, who is retiring after this season, was running sixth on lap 10 when he misjudged his braking and ran too deep into the Inner Loop. Hamlin, who was third, grabbed the lead for good when both ran wide in the first turn.
“Luckily for us, we pitted a little bit latter than everyone else and we had got a spotter and crew chief keyed in that there were a tremendous amount of pit road penalties”, Hamlin said. “I can’t tell you how disappointed I was we didn’t win the first one”.
“Cautions”, Hamlin said enabled him to go the remaining distance without pitting again.
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The win serves as a big moment in Hamlin’s season. “Sometimes you see guys run up front on a road course and you’re like, ‘Where did that come from?’ And it only happens once”. “I saw the 11 was blocking low and thought the 78 would get in behind and rub up the 11 and I wanted to be outside to make a cross-over and see if I couldn’t get both”. We really didn’t make it much better.
