Hamlin gets first victory of 2007
July 1, 2007
LOUDON, N.H. (AP) -A two-tire gamble for Denny Hamlin paid off with his first NASCAR Nextel Cup victory of the season Sunday at New Hampshire International Speedway.
Hamlin, last year's top rookie, is second in the season points, but he's been frustrated this season, leading laps and contending without being able to take a checkered flag in the first 16 races.
It appeared he would fall short again this time, with Martin Truex Jr., series points leader Jeff Gordon and Truex's teammate, Dale Earnhardt Jr., all running ahead of Hamlin late in the race.
But the leaders made their final scheduled pit stops on lap 255 during a caution period and Hamlin was the only one of the quartet to take two fresh tires instead of four. He vaulted from fourth to first and stayed out front to the end of the Lenox Industrial Tools 300.
``It's amazing to finally get a win,'' Hamlin said after winning for the third time in his budding Cup career and the first time since last July at Pocono.
While Hamlin worked hard to stay out front, Gordon was working over Truex, trying hard to get by. The two Chevrolets spent a lot of time side-by-side and nose-to-tail until Gordon finally squeezed past seven laps from the end of the 300-lap race on the 1.058-mile oval.
Gordon, racing with an interim crew chief after NASCAR suspended both his and teammate Jimmie Johnson's crew chiefs for six weeks after their teams were caught the previous week at Sonoma with illegally modified front fenders, nearly chased down Hamlin.
The four-time series champion got right up on the rear bumper of the leader's Joe Gibbs Racing Chevy on the final turn. Hamlin held on to win by just 0.068-seconds - less than a car-length.
RacingOne Rewind: New Hampshire
RacingOne.com
A look back at Denny Hamlin's third career NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series win in Sunday's LENOX Industrial Tools 300 at New Hampshire International Speedway including news, notes and observations by the RacingOne staff.
Inside Line
Denny Hamlin scored his first win in 33 NEXTEL Cup races Sunday, holding off Jeff Gordon to give Joe Gibbs Racing its first-ever Car of Tomorrow victory.
Keys to Victory Lane
Hamlin and crew chief Mike Ford elected to take two tires only during their last pit stop of the day, a move that gave Hamlin the track position necessary to score his third career Cup win.
Zero to Hero
Got to be Matt Kesneth, who after starting 30th, crept back into the top 10 and scored a ninth-place finish.
Hero to Zero
After giving Toyota its first-ever NEXTEL Cup pole, Dave Blaney sunk to the back of the field and posted a 29th place finish in the Caterpillar Camry.
Rookie of the Race
David Ragan got caught up in a last lap mishap with Kurt Busch, but managed to come home 15th for Roush Fenway Racing.
Notables
Jeff Burton started the day 25th and came home seventh. Jamie McMurray was mired back in 38th when the day started and posted a top-20 finish with a 16th-place run. And after starting 31st, Bobby Labonte gave Petty Enterprises a 18th place finish on Sunday.
Pit Stops
* Denny Hamlin captured his third career NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series win in his 60th start. Detailed Active Driver Wins
* Hamlin won the 56th race for car owner Joe Gibbs. Detailed Active Car Owner Wins
* Hamlin became the second driver to win at NHIS from the 11th position. He also became the 48th driver overall to win a race from that position. Starting Position Facts
* Hamlin won the 14th race of the season for Chevrolet. It was also the 611th overall win for the manufacturer. All-Time Manufacturer WinsJeff Gordon (second) notched his 11th top five of the season and 10th at New Hampshire.
* Martin Truex Jr. (third) scored his fourth top five in the last four races.
* Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s fourth-place finish was his seventh top-10 finish at New Hampshire during his NEXTEL Cup career.
* Jimmie Johnson (fifth) scored his first top-five finish in the last six races.
* Jeff Green's top-10 finish Sunday was his first since Phoenix in April.
* Jeff Burton (seventh) scored his eighth top-five finish at Loudon in 25 career starts.
* Sunday was Kevin Harvick’s eighth top-10 finish at New Hampshire in his 13th career start.
* After two straight finishes outside the top 30, Matt Kenseth notched his 11th top 10 of the season wih a ninth-place finish.
* Ryan Newman (10th) has only finished outside the top 10 at Loudon three times in 11 career starts.
* The 300-lap race saw 20 lead changes among 11 drivers and an average speed of 108.215 mph.
* Six caution flags were thrown for 31 laps.
* The LENOX Industrial Tools 300 lasted 2 hours, 55 minutes, 59 seconds.
Lug Nuts
* NASCAR sure showed Jeff Gordon, Jimmie Johnson and Dale Earnhardt Jr. by suspending their crew chiefs didn't they?
* Good day for some of the superteams with Hendrick, RCR and DEI all getting two drivers in the top 10.
* Anyone that doesn't believe Dale Earnhardt Jr. will be driving a red number 8 with Budweiser sponsorship next year needs to come out of the summer sun.
* Just like the old days - John Andretti driving for Petty Enterprises, and finishing 42nd.
* Great day for DEI all the way around - opps, just saw Paul Menard's finish. Oh well, two out of three.
Garage Talk
* "You can't overdrive this car. "The harder I tried to drive, the slower I went." - Jeff Gordon on the COT
* "Six months ago I'd have been begging for a third, but ... I thought we had the car there toward the end." - Martin Truex, Jr.
* "There's not much you can do about stuff like that." - Carl Edwards, abouthis car falling off the jacks on a late pit stop.
* "Any owner would be foolish not to speak to him to see kind of where his intentions are, what he wanted." - Richard Childress on Kyle Busch
RacingOne Rating
On a scale of 1 to 10 New Hampshire mooses (or is the plural still moose?), we'll give Sunday's Lenox Industrial Tools 300 a six. Same old Hew Hampshire, pretty dull most of the day until things get spiced up a smidge at the end. Gordon and Hamlin's last lap tangle was a bit exciting, but all in all nothing that will make us count the days until we return to Loudon in September. Next its time to strap on the restrictor-plates for next Saturday night's Pepsi 400 at Daytona, where we hope Mother Nature will cooperate.
Matt McLaughlin's Thinkin' Out Loud : New Hampshire Edition
Thomas Bowles
Editor’s Note : Due to a family emergency, Matt McLaughlin was unavailable for Thinkin’ Out Loud; Managing Editor and SI.com contributor Tom Bowles filled in for this edition. Matt will return next week; in the meantime, please keep the McLaughlins in your thoughts and prayers.
The Key Moment: Crew chief Mike Ford finally figured out the best way for the No. 11 pit crew to keep costing the team a race win; don’t leave the outcome in their hands. Ford gave Denny Hamlin two tires during a pit stop with 44 laps to go at New Hampshire, putting the No. 11 car out front in clean air. The sophomore sensation responded by holding off a frantic late charge by Jeff Gordon to snag his first win of ‘07.
In A Nutshell: A mixed bag. Take a racetrack already hard to pass on, make it ten times harder to pass with the Car Of Tomorrow, and you’ve got yourself a bore. Still, it’s a race that got mildly interesting at the end; intense racing among Hamlin, Gordon, and Truex ended with a close finish that left everyone on their feet.
What They’ll Be Talking About Around The Water Cooler This Week:
Alright, it’s been over 48 hours and I’m still scratching my head. How can Brian Vickers can be sent home after a post-qualifying violation one week after Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson were put in the field without even turning a lap? Vickers’ violation was for the car being too low, but at least he had a time good enough to make the field on time; that’s more than Gordon or Johnson could say, as they got in on “provisionals” at Sonoma. Without a guaranteed starting spot, Vickers had no such protections, and as such he packed his bags and handed his starting spot to “44th place” Chad Chaffin. That’s ironic, as it was Chaffin who got sent home at Pocono last year when a similar violation occurred with his old team; other than that, this decision hardly seems fair when compared to the special slots given to the No. 24 and No. 48. Isn’t it time to fix a rapidly destructive provisional system? Or is it time for Red Bull to pony up and become NASCAR’s official drink of choice? Maybe then their car would actually have been allowed to start the race…
Speaking of being too low, the No. 5 and No. 70 cars failed post-race inspection this week for the exact same violation as Vickers. If they’re convicted, that means four Hendrick-supported cars were caught “cheating” in a 10-day time span. This time around, the penalties will likely be worse; if NASCAR’s willing to shell out six-race suspensions for violations on Friday, you can only imagine the carnage that could ensue from problems discovered during the actual race itself. Eight races? Ten? Stay tuned on this…
It looks like I’m going to need more than one tutoring session this week. Please, someone make me understand why someone would try to jack a car back up by using a wheel hub. When the jack fell on Carl Edwards’ pit stop, the response of the jackman was to try and lift the car up by putting it where the left rear tire would go! And with the approval and support of the pit crew coach, no less! No matter what the coach thinks, that blunder easily made the difference in Edwards falling a lap down after the stop; as Kyle Petty said best on TNT, “That’s not very efficient.”
David Ragan is having a surprising rookie year, but he’s got to stop running into everything that moves. If Kurt Busch wasn’t on probation, he’d be searching for his head on pit road after it was promptly severed in two. Believe me, that’s not a veteran you want to anger.
The Hindenburg Award For Foul Fortune
Carl Edwards spent most of this race tearing through the field like a bat out of…well, that place down below. But as soon as he snagged the lead after starting way back in 22nd, that dropped jack on a pit stop led to his crew falling into chaos; 47.6 seconds later, his chances for the win were all but over, although the Lucky Dog gave him a chance to salvage a respectable 13th.
Fellow Roush driver Greg Biffle appeared to have a car that was reasonably strong as well, and was on his way to trying to impress before a bad tach reading gave him three pit road speeding penalties within 100 laps of each other.
Dave Blaney won the pole, but switched his car with a Caterpillar bulldozer before the race, a move that might have cost him. In all seriousness; for whatever reason, Blaney lost the handle on his Toyota and finished 29th, one lap off the pace to kill what had been a promising weekend. All in all, it was an awful day for every Camry in the field, as David Reutimann lost a cylinder and Jeremy Mayfield’s front splitter broke in two.
Clint Bowyer had a Top 10 car until finding Ryan Newman’s air hose on pit road. At that point, he just became another car with a broken oil line. Bowyer wound up 37th.
The “Seven Come Eleven” Award For Fine Fortune
Hamlin was lucky to be in contention for the win after nearly spinning out after contact with Juan Pablo Montoya early on; the bump ‘n’ grind left an impression on Hamlin’s left rear bumper panel.
It was clear that having their crew chiefs “suspended” did nothing to diffuse the luck of both Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson. Both finished in the Top 5 with ease, and Gordon would have won if he had another five laps in the race.
Jeff Green joined Hamlin in taking two tires on his last pit stop; the move brought him up to 4th and he was able to hold on for a solid 6th place finish, matching his best effort of the season to date.
Brian Vickers’ loss was Chad Chaffin’s gain; he took a car that originally didn’t even make the starting field (or 11 other races this season) and brought him off in 36th without any major incidents.
Worth Noting
* Hamlin’s win finally gave him his first Car of Tomorrow victory in eight races; with the victory, he continues to lead all drivers in laps led during these particular events (624).
* Jeff Gordon collected his fifth straight Top 10 finish.
* Martin Truex, Jr. has finished third or better in four of the last five races, including his win at Dover.
* Dale Earnhardt, Jr. picked up his second Top 5 and fifth Top 15 in the six races with Tony Gibson as crew chief (Tony Eury, Jr. returns from his suspension next week).
* Jeff Green’s sixth place finish was his first Top 10 finish since Phoenix in April. He now has three Top 10s on the year; that’s as many as he’s had the past three full Cup seasons combined.
* Jeff Burton (7th) has two straight Top 10s for the first time since April.
* Ward Burton has now made only eight of seventeen races this season, with five of those starts resulting in DNF’s (he was 43rd Sunday).
* In eight Car Of Tomorrow events, not one team has needed to go to a backup car.
What’s The Points?
When the top two drivers in points finish 1-2 in the race, it’s a given they’ll remain on top of the standings, and that’s exactly what happened. Finishing second, Gordon’s margin on Denny Hamlin shrinks to 156, but that’s still enough for nearly a full race cushion on his closest challenger.
Behind the top two, the rest of the Top 12 drivers remained the same, although quite a few moved around. Matt Kenseth holds the third spot, with Jimmie Johnson moving up to fourth and Jeff Burton moving down to fifth. Tony Stewart, Kevin Harvick, and Carl Edwards remain 6th, 7th, and 8th, with Kyle Busch jumping to 9th and Martin Truex, Jr. holding serve in 10th. Clint Bowyer drops two spots to 11th, with Dale Earnhardt, Jr. holding the 12th and final Chase spot. Junior’s margin over 13th place Ryan Newman now stands at 127; Newman’s the only driver within striking distance to knock someone out with nine races until the Chase.
Overall Rating (with a one being a stinker and a six being a classic): I’m going to give this one three cans of generic local brewery stuff. The Car Of Tomorrow made New Hampshire a bore for most of the race, but another exciting finish was right in line with what this car has provided almost every time out.
Next Up: NASCAR finishes the first half of its 36-race season right where it began; at the hollowed ground of Daytona International Speedway. Although plans are for the CoT to run restricted engines at Talladega, the Pepsi 400 will be the final race of plate madness with the Car Of Soon-To-Be-Yesterday, marking the end of an 18-year-era of nail-biting excitement…with all-too-tragic results far too often. Catch the race Saturday night at 7:30 PM on TNT; the network plans “Wide Open Coverage,” making it the first time any Cup race has been shown flag-to-flag without commercial interruption.
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10 Points To Ponder ... After New Hampshire
Becca Gladden
1. Bonus Points, Part One – In the wake of last week’s penalties against the Nos. 24 and 48, drivers like Denny Hamlin and Kyle Petty said that a better punishment would have been taking away bonus points – the extra 10 points per win that drivers get once they make the Chase. But I don’t see how this penalty could possibly work because not all drivers will have bonus points, making it impossible to apply across the board. Since not every driver with bonus points will make the Chase, taking bonus points away from those drivers would be, well, pointless.
2. Bonus Points, Part Two – If you had any question about whether the new bonus points would encourage drivers to go for the win rather than settling for a good points day, consider today’s admission by race winner Denny Hamlin’s crew chief, Mike Ford:
“I don’t know that it gets more aggressive than what we did. We didn’t have the best car, and the only way we had a shot to get those 10 (bonus) points inside the Chase is to shoot for the win.”
The purpose of these bonus points was to shift the emphasis from point racing to winning, and, according to both Hamlin and Ford, it seems to be having the desired effect.
3. Phoenix Vindication? – The tracks at Loudon and Phoenix are often compared as similar flat one-milers, and Denny Hamlin was bitterly disappointed after losing at Phoenix in April to Jeff Gordon despite leading 70 laps there. Gordon won Phoenix with Hamlin finishing third, but Denny held off a hard-charging Gordon in the closing laps to take the win at Loudon. With these two drivers currently first and second in points, the competition will only get more fierce between them going forward.
4. Toyota Takes P1 – Sunday’s Loudon race will go down in history as the occasion of Toyota’s first Cup pole, achieved by Dave Blaney. Blaney led 30 laps early, but lost the handling as the race went on and finished a disappointing 29th in his Camry. Blaney was the highest Toyota finisher, followed by David Reutimann (38th) and Jeremy Mayfield (40th).
5. And Speaking Of Toyota… – What do you guys think about Brian Vickers missing the race? He qualified 28th, but his time was disallowed after he failed post-qualifying inspection by 1/8-inch beyond the 1/4-inch tolerance for minimum height in the left front. If Vickers was in the Top 35, he still could have raced despite the problem, but as one of the drivers outside the top 35, he was disqualified. Fair or not? What about the Top 35 rule in general?
6. When Dale Junior Talks … – People listen, even at the company that he will soon leave behind. It was May 10, 2007, when Junior officially announced his pending departure from DEI. There had been 10 Cup races before that day and seven races since. In the pre-announcement phase, Earnhardt Jr.‘s average finish was 18.4 – after the announcement, 10.3. Teammate Martin Truex Jr.‘s pre-announcement average finish, 22.2 – since the announcement, 8.6. It’s obvious that Earnhardt’s criticism of DEI lit a fire under a few folks that changed the direction of the company.
7. Trackside Goes International – If you missed SpeedTV’s “Trackside” on Friday, you missed a show with a decidedly international flare. The two drivers interviewed were Juan Pablo Montoya, a native of Colombia, and Marcos Ambrose from Australia. With the Busch series racing in both Mexico and Canada this season (Montreal in August) and the latest rumor of British-born IRL star Dan Wheldon switching to NASCAR, it’s clear that the sanctioning body is forging ahead with it’s goal of world-wide expansion – and it’s working well.
8. Chevy’s Still Superior – Hard to believe that all of the top eight finishers were members of the Bowtie Brigade, with Matt Kenseth in a Ford and Ryan Newman in Dodge rounding out the Top 10. Chevy also has eight of the Top 10 drivers in overall points, with Kenseth and Carl Edwards the only non-Chevy drivers out there…both in Fords.
9. New Hampshire’s New Nickname – Based on both pre- and post-race interviews, there was one phrase that was uttered so frequently it seems like it should be this track’s new motto … or maybe it’s what all of us can look forward to at every Car of Tomorrow track: “Hard To Pass”
10. Kudos to Cousin Carl – Carl Edwards showed a good bit of moxie, recovering from a dreadful pit road incident to finish 13th. Said Edwards,
“The good news is we had an awesome car – the bad news (is) it fell off the jack when were leading the thing pitting under green. Everybody kept their composure,“ Edwards noted. “The car was still good enough. But this is a race-winner right here, not a 13th-place car.”
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