Denny Hamlin reacted to his wreck at the Coke Zero 400 at Daytona, lamenting his 'horrible' luck at superspeedways lately.
Denny Hamlin was already firmly locked into the playoffs, but the driver of the No. 11 car desperately wanted a good finish at Daytona. It wasn’t meant to be.
Hamlin got caught up in a big wreck early on and took significant damage. And though he thought things would work out, his car steadily got worse throughout the day.
“I thought we were going to be OK,” Hamlin said on the Actions Detrimental podcast. “I had some right-front damage, but the steering wasn’t totally out of whack. Once they replaced the right front toe link it was better. It drove OK in the corners. And the speed was fine.
“And then it just went downhill. It just felt like the more we worked on it the worse it got. And we started blowing tires and it just was not a great day for us yellow line to yellow line.”
The last few times out at superspeedways haven’t been particularly kind to Denny Hamlin, who just seems to find trouble at them. He lamented that fact.
“I mean it could have gone both ways with the superspeedways, but certainly just not ideal,” Hamlin said. “In the first stage of both of those races we ended up crashed. I mean my record at Daytona, guys, has been horrible. Horrible. I just, do I just stop racing and just wait on the field to thin? Because that’s what, to me, watching the race from about 50 car lengths behind for most of the time, it seemed like the race, and we’ve talked about it on this podcast before, really took a turn when the field thinned out. There was more room to move.”
A big wreck early in the race cleared out about 10 drivers. From there, there were remarkably few wrecks. Certainly no big ones.
Carson Hocevar blew an engine. Joey Logano spun out from the lead. Erik Jones was muscled off the lead and pushed back. But no big ones.
“There was many other one-car incidences that could have been; when you’ve got the leader wreck it’s usually hard for that to be the only car that ends up wrecking,” Denny Hamlin said. “That was Logano down to the grass in the infield. So I mean that could have easily, all you’ve got to do is clip one more car and there goes everyone.”
But it didn’t happen. Hamlin himself blew a front right tire and hit the wall, further adding to his misery.
Denny Hamlin explained how he thought having a little more space to operate in the closing stage made things easier on the drivers up front. The ones with good cars pretty much all had a chance to maneuver around to try to steal a win.
“(Ryan) Blaney coming from 12th in the final couple laps, he had room to navigate,” Hamlin said. “That’s what’s so great about the Xfinity cars and the Xfinity package is if you look there’s space between the cars. They’re not right on each other all the way around the racetrack.
“Where a lot of times in NextGen we just get logjammed in this two- or three-wide racing. It looks good but you can’t really go anywhere. But at the end of the race there was enough chaos up front or enough air moving around where it created some good passing and it looked like a very entertaining race from my seat.”
That said, it just wasn’t Denny Hamlin’s day. He’ll recollect himself and get ready for the playoffs, knowing it’s a fresh season now.
Category: General Sports
