An ingenious Ross Chastain and yet another pit stop mishap cost Denny Hamlin the Championship
Ross Chastain and Denny Hamlin
Denny Hamlin is eliminated from the 2022 cup playoff. The JGR No:11 is out of the championship chase after failing to secure enough points to progress in Martinsville. The recurring story of pit stop mishap and an impressive, video game inspired, move from rival Ross Chastain knocked him out of the playoffs.
Denny Hamlin was 5 points behind the cut-off going into the race on Sunday. He just needed to have a win or a top 3 finish to progress to the final round. Denny Had the best car of the day as his teammate and race winner Christopher Bell. He led a race record 203 laps on the day and just had to maintain the track position to progress.
Denny Hamlin comfortable run was constrained by the successive poor pitstops he had. On lap 470 the No:11 team had 14-second-long pit-stop. This placed him at p13 in the final restart. But the veteran moved his way up the field and was once again in the comfort zone to enter championship 4. Chastain who was chasing him at p10 had to pass at least five cars to progress.
On the final lap everything went upside down for Hamlin. Ross Chastain pulled off a video game move and finished ahead of Hamlin. The Trackhouse driver pinned himself to the wall and ride along it. The Joe Gibbs Racing driver had nothing to do other than just accept his fate.
Denny Hamlin opens up about his exit
Denny Hamlin in his post-race interview pointed out that he had the best car of the day and is thankful to his team for that. He added that just like in five or six races in the regular season, the pit stops faults came to bite them.
“The team gave me a great car. I could not thank them enough for giving me a race-winning car, but you have to have all the pieces of the puzzle together, and the one thing that hurt us this year and kept us from having five, six wins in the regular season is the same thing that bit us today. That’s our fault,” Denny Hamlin said.
Denny Hamlin has been having poor final pit stops the whole season. He was surprised by his climb to the top after starting the race on P12 on Sunday. There were five cars between him and Ross Chastain. But it wasn’t enough for the progression.
“It seems like we’ve been really good in races, but it seems like it’s always the last pit stop those bites us, and certainly when I knew we restarted 12th that it was going to be an uphill climb and I was pleasantly surprised that we were able to overcome the uphill climb and put four, five cars between me and Ross. But it wasn’t enough,” Denny Hamlin added.
Denny Hamlin wanted secure four successive championship 4 entries. He couldn’t ask for batter set up than what he got at Martinsville from the No:11 JGR crew. But they didn’t have everything together to win or progress.
“We wanted to make the final four for four years in a row, but (expletive). There’s nothing else I feel like I could do differently; it doesn’t change my emotions of it. But there is nothing my team, Chris Gabehart, Toyota, or anybody could have done differently to change that outcome for us today. We didn’t have it all together,” says Denny Hamlin.
Hamlin is hurt by the pit stop mess that cost them. He said, “It still burns because I’m thinking halfway through the race that this is a cakewalk, we just have to maintain track position. Just maintain. And we didn’t,”.
What are your thoughts on Hamlin’s exit?
Justin P Joy
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