Photo Credit: Noel Lanier
Denny Hamlin, driver of the No. 11 FedEx Toyota, is excited to return to Daytona International Speedway where just five months ago he won his first Daytona 500. The Daytona 500 Champion is looking to sweep both races by winning on Saturday Night.
“It’s definitely been a good year no matter what when you win a race like that, but it’s cool to come back here and obviously you go – had to do some Coke ride-alongs yesterday and you’re back in victory lane where you were and definitely brings back some good memories for sure,” Hamlin quoted. “Really this track has been very good to me throughout my career. We hope to complete the sweep this weekend.”
Last week at Sonoma Raceway the Chesterfield, Virginia native finished second to fellow competitor Tony Stewart and there is a lot of people talking stating Hamlin let Smoke win so that he could make the chase at the end of the year. Hamlin made it clear going into the weekend he didn’t let Smoke win.
“Ultimately I made a mistake and thought we would maybe drag race to the line because we were in the center of the corner side-by-side and I thought this could be good,” Hamlin quoted. “Once I saw him steer left, I knew it was over with. He had an opportunity to – if I’m in his situation, I probably would do the same. My biggest mistake I feel like is not recognizing the gap I had behind me. I don’t know whether Tony would have gotten there. I thought it would have been very close if you really wanted to carry the car down in there, whether he still would have got to me or not. I still needed to execute to make him make the decision. Instead I made the decision for him.”
After the race Hamlin took some time to reflect on his Sonoma finish. Hamlin feels Sonoma is unique because going into the race weekend, he was just hoping for a top-12 or top-10 finish. However, midway into the race he was thinking he would take a top-five and then three quarters of the way he thought he had the car to win. It didn’t work out that way and now he can move on.
“I mean, things just worked out great for Tony (Stewart),” Hamlin added. “I mean, he pitted and a caution comes out and it really helped him and it took us out of the lead – not necessarily out of the lead that hurt us, but being able to dictate the restarts, so he was able to dictate the restarts and then I got passed by the 78 (Martin Truex Jr.) on a restart and I had to work around him and it just burned all my stuff up before I got to him. In my defense, which I should still not mistakes, is that I’ve never been in that position before. I’ve not been that competitive on road courses and so I didn’t know the proper defensive move going into that last corner. I’d love to have that situation back again, but I really just didn’t know the proper move.
“I thought I had two car lengths. Looking back at the video, I probably had three and that’s kind of the point where you can just run your own corner and maybe be okay, but I knew he was going to throw caution to the wind and I just – I literally looked up and went to my same braking point and I wheel hopped again and like it was just anomaly. I wheel hopped the previous two laps in a row. That’s how I got beside him in the first place and so I just made a mistake being in a position I’ve never been in before, but now I have confidence that now every road course I go to I can win those races and so I think that hopefully if anything that’s a point for me that I think that when I go back to road course, I know that I can win these races and really going into Sonoma I didn’t go there with a whole lot of aspirations of winning that race.
“I just haven’t been that great on them. I’ve always struggled for speed. It’s not been because of my cars – it’s been because of me – but now I feel like completely the cycle is possible and I’ll get it before my career is over for sure.”
After the race ended at Sonoma, Hamlin immediately went and talked to his crew. He wanted to apologize for his mistake which caused them to finish second instead of first.
“I hate to call one of my crew guys out, but I mean he even had a conversation with my girlfriend (Jordan Fish) and said – she says, ‘Hey, we gonna get a win today,’ and he says, ‘We might want to play the lotto instead,” Hamlin stated. “We hadn’t had the best luck on road courses. I think statistically, I’m probably the worst average finish of any full-time Cup driver over the last six years and so it was out of the blue and I don’t know. I’m sort of happy with second. I also could have been 32nd after the last corner if he was close enough, so who knows, but I’d love to play it over again and have the experience that I have now knowing what I maybe could have done because I’ve never really honestly broke down road course races to figure out the proper defensive move in the final corner of the final lap.”
Though enough about last weekend as the American driver is focused on getting his No.11 car back into Victory Lane. Hamlin is hoping to use the similar strategy as well as the teamwork from other competitors like he did when he won the Daytona 500 so that he can win the Coke 400 as well.
“Anytime we can work together, I try for sure,” Hamlin said. “I don’t know that it was a plot to take out one car by any means. I thought we showed a lot of speed with just our cars in practice looking at lap times with what we would run as a group of five. Simple math says what the pack was going to run and I knew that if we could stay in a line and commit to each other, it would be tough for others to pass us. It worked out well. Legitimately there were five Toyotas out to win on the final lap and that’s really all we could have asked for. It was something that was in the works for a long time and it was executed perfectly by our whole organization and it worked out. Obviously any time you are successful like that you try to repeat it, but the competitors have a lot of say in that, so there are others who are going to have issue with what our plan is.”
Hamlin says he loves racing at DIS as well as other restrictor plate race tracks because something clicked for him and he just feels comfortable on those tracks.
“I feel like I know what I’m doing and the results have showed it,” Hamlin adds. “Eventually, we’re going to get in a wreck. I think we did at – yeah, we did at Talladega, but I’ve just been very fortunate on superspeedways and the bad finishes that I’ve had it’s not because something I feel like I did. It was something that I could caught up in, so I’ve been fortunate. It’s been a great battle with the 88 (Dale Earnhardt Jr.) probably the last four years with me and him. There’s been a lot of one-two finishes with us and hopefully I’d love to complete the sweep winning the Unlimited, the 500 and the July race. I feel like I gift basket-ed him that dual win on Thursday this year, so I’d like to get him back here in July.”
When the No.11 takes to the track this weekend, it will be a special paint scheme Hamlin himself created. Being able to create the scheme was his gift from Fed Ex for winning the Daytona 500.
“I didn’t think about the temperature with the color choices for sure, but I just wanted it to be like an old school-type car,” Hamlin quoted. “This isn’t really what my late models looked like, but just to me I look at the car and I think old school, short track-type paint scheme that they have on super late models, so it’s cool. It’s a lot of the colors that I have on my personal logos. It’s black, red and white, so I think next year if they let me do it, it’s going to be white on white on white.”
