Huge Disappointment But Not Quite a Total Disaster for Denny Hamlin

LAS VEGAS – It all started out so well for Denny Hamlin but in the end it was a case of staving off disaster and salvaging the best possible finish he could in the NASCAR Cup Series race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway Sunday (Oct. 4). And with Kyle Larson finishing second, nearly pulling off what would have been a hugely impressive victory, the Joe Gibbs Racing veteran saw his points deficit to the leader increase to 40 from the 26-point gap it had been at the drop of the green flag.

Hamlin had started the day with much optimism, at one of his best tracks, leading the field to green and looking stout before he pitted on lap 35. Hamlin retained the lead once the cycle had completed, but a spin for Zane Smith brought out the first caution flag on lap 45 with Chris Gayle choosing to bring the No. 11 car down pit road.

“We had nine laps on our tires, I think, and then some guys that had pit later, you know, had basically only had three or four laps on their tires,” crew chief Chris Gayle said to Frontstretch in front of the 11 team hauler postrace. “So it’s just a matter of how many guys were gonna stay out. It wasn’t an intentional ploy to let Larson get his lap back or anything like that because I think guys did stay out in front, right? It didn’t matter whether we did or not.

“So yeah, honestly it wasn’t a great call on my part, but that’s in hindsight after knowing that, OK, we didn’t get back to the lead at the end and wrecked with three to go [in stage one]. I thought tires would be a bigger thing and then we would get back to the lead, no problem with that many laps left in the stage … yeah, it was a 50/50 call. I mean, obviously you know that you’re being like you should have just stayed out, you know what I mean. But that’s, you know, knowing how it played out.”

So what did Hamlin make of his spin?

“Just trying to make up the track position we lost and trying to push to get it back and evidently it was marbles or something up there,” Hamlin said. “It was quite odd but I went up there to try to get a run and it just spun out and obviously damaged the car.”

And while a caution didn’t ultimately fly, the damage was done to the car.

“Yeah, there’s definitely damage from the spin,” Gayle said. “The diffuser strakes were worn off in the back and the edge of the diffuser is broken, which is just things you can’t replace during the race and fix. The splitter is hard to say it was knocked up but definitely some stays were bent, so some angle was knocked out of it, the surface on the bottom of it was damaged a bunch, so, yeah, that stuff you’re just not going to fix.”

With 40 points to make up in five remaining races, Hamlin was downbeat but not defeated with his 16th-place finish, all told not a bad result given the damage he sustained in the spin.

“We perform speed wise like we have today, at least in the first stage before the damage, then yeah, we can,” Hamlin said. “I’m still not really digesting it really truthfully, and so you just got to play the ball from where it lies and where it lies. We got a little gap we got to make up, so we got to perform at our best.”

His crew chief concurred.

“Just gotta go win and execute,” Gayle commented. “You gotta go win now for sure. 40 back (is) pretty tough. I mean, you’re getting to half a race almost here now, so we need to gain some points for sure on the 5.”