Denny Hamlin: No one has had worse luck in the Chase than I have
Don’t try to tell Denny Hamlin your favorite driver has had more heartbreak in the Chase than he has. He’ll have none of it.
“There’s nobody that’s had worse luck in the Chase than I have,” Hamlin said Thursday. “That’s a fact. I can rattle off every year – when I look at performance I think that 2014 we went all the way to the Final 4 and we were one caution away – nine laps to go leading the race from winning that championship.
“2010 [when Hamlin lost the points lead over the last two races to Jimmie Johnson] we got beat, we made some mistakes … Last year we were leading the points and the roof hatch happened. So, if I’m going to be eliminated I want it to be straight up and nothing happen and – knock on wood – things have been very, very ultra-reliable in our race cars over the course of the season and really since Texas of last year … Eventually, even the Red Sox won the World Series so for sure I’m thinking I can win the Chase.”
The roof hatch happening last year came at Talladega. Hamlin entered the race second in the points standings but finished 37th after he was involved in a crash. Before the crash he got shuffled back in the pack because the roof hatch on the car wasn’t fastened properly and came open during the race.
With 10 of the other 11 Chase drivers finishing in the top 15, Hamlin was out of the Chase in the second round.
In 2012, a year when Hamlin won five times, he entered Martinsville 20 points back of the lead in third. His car stopped on track with approximately 100 laps to go and he finished 34 laps down, leaving Martinsville 49 points out of the lead.
And in 2009, the year before Hamlin gagged up the lead to Johnson, he finished fifth in the Chase despite two blown engines and a crash in the span of four races.
Hamlin enters this Chase as the presumptive favorite in the eyes of many. He’s finished in the top 10 in eight-straight races including wins at Watkins Glen and last week at Richmond.
Hamlin does, however, lead the Sprint Cup Series in speeding penalties. He said Thursday there was a “method to the madness” and his Chase strategy would be to “be aggressive but smart on pit road.”
Much of that aggressiveness may also be curbed. NASCAR measures pit road speed in segments and has added more segments to pit roads throughout the season in an attempt to prevent teams from manipulating their segment speeds immediately before and after pit stops.
“I think that what the extra lines has done is taken the advantage away from qualifying well,” Hamlin said. “I think it used to be that there were only six to seven spots on pit road that you could put yourself on a timing line and really gain a lot of speed. Now with all of these extra timing lines I think that qualifying doesn’t mean as much. Good cars are spread out all over pit road and sometimes they’re parked right next to each other, so I think for sure a lot of advantages that had on pit road is gone now.”
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Nick Bromberg is the editor of From The Marbles on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at nickbromberg@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!
