Photo Credit: Noel Lanier
REID SPENCER/NASCAR WIRE SERVICE
MARTINSVILLE, Va. – Denny Hamlin vowed to be more cautious on Martinsville Speedway’s pit road, where speeding penalties had hampered his efforts on more than one occasion.
So much for that game plan.
Hamlin was flagged for speeding during pit stops under caution on Lap 93 of Sunday’s STP 500 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race at the .526-mile short track. But demotion to the rear of the field was just the start of Hamlin’s problems on a star-crossed day in his native Virginia.
On Lap 220, Hamlin drove hard into Turn 1, but his No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota wheel-hopped and spun out of control. The car hit the wall, damaging the right front suspension beyond repair.
By then, Hamlin had recovered most of the track position he lost because of the penalty, but he retired from the race after the wreck and was credited with a 39th-place finish.
“It’s my first time ever wheel-hopping here, so it’s a little embarrassing,” said Hamlin, a five-time winner at the track. “But we were the fastest car those last 30 laps, and we got back to the top-five, and I was making up a lot of my speed on entry. As the tires wear, the rears get hotter, less grip, you can’t brake at the same amount and I just – it was really out of the blue.
“I didn’t ever have a hint of it up until that moment, so a bit of a rookie move on my part – been around here too much to do something like that, but learning for the fall and I’m really encouraged about how good our car came up through the pack, and I really thought we had a car that could win.”
