NASCAR

Sprint Cup

CUP: High Stakes For Hamlin At RIR

Denny Hamlin has one NASCAR Sprint Cup victory at Richmond...

Tom Jensen | Posted September 09, 2010 Charlotte, NC

Denny Hamlin has five NASCAR Sprint Cup wins this season. (Photo: LAT Photographic)

Denny Hamlin's worst-case scenario at Richmond International Raceway is that he starts the Chase for the Sprint Cup 10 points out of the lead. And in all likelihood, he’ll leave RIR tied for, or perhaps in, the lead.

Yet few drivers have as much at stake in Saturday night’s Air Guard 400 as the Chesterfield, Va., native, who grew up about 15 minutes away from the 0.75-mile RIR short track.

Hamlin will have the usual pressures that any driver has when he races at his home track — friends wanting tickets, sponsor appearances to make, the burning desire to win in front of your family and your pals.

But Hamlin also has self-confidence, or maybe confidence in his cars, on the line. Last weekend at Atlanta, Hamlin was very vocal about his concerns about reliability in his Joe Gibbs Racing Toyotas.

“Reliability is the only thing we really need to work on,” said Hamlin during last Saturday’s media availability at Atlanta Motor Speedway. “Our speed could be better and we took a right step this weekend. I feel like we gained some of that back. Reliability, it’s taken us out of the last three Chases not being reliable. You have to have it to be the champion.”

Asked if the team could do anything about the reliability issue, Hamlin replied, “It all goes back to what happens inside that shop and making sure the parts and pieces are right on the car before it comes to the track.”

Little did Hamlin know how prophetic is words would prove.

In Sunday night’s Emory Healthcare 500 at AMS, Hamlin’s FedEx-sponsored Toyota was the class of the field early, when he led 74 laps. But on lap 143 of the 325-lap race, his motor let go and he finished the race in last place, behind even the start-and-park cars.

With that in mind, Hamlin desperately needs a good run at RIR to ease his worried nature, which has now gone to Defcon IV following the Atlanta debacle.

And he’ll go into RIR knowing he was roundly smoked by his own teammate, Kyle Busch, in the May Richmond race. In NASCAR’s last visit here, Busch led 226 of 400 laps en route to victory, while Hamlin was a disappointing 11th.

“We ran so poorly there in May compared to what we usually do,” said Hamlin. “We’re excited to go back there. We feel like we’ve learned a lot since then. I’ve got an open mind when I go back there — I can’t rely on stuff from the past. It’s going to be the first time that we go back there that we really don’t have any notes to go back on. We’re just going to come with a new setup and see how it works.”

Denny Hamlin grew up just a few minutes from Richmond International Raceway. (Photo: LAT Photographic)

Last year, Hamlin won this race, which got him off to a strong start in the Chase. And he and Jimmie Johnson each have a series-high five victories this season.

After Saturday’s race, NASCAR will reset the point totals of each Chase driver to 5,000 plus 10 points for each race victory. Right now, Hamlin and Johnson have 50 bonus points; no other driver has more than 30. If Johnson or Hamlin wins Saturday, they’ll pick up the final 10 bonus points, otherwise they’ll start the Chase tied.

This year, as one of the championship favorites, Hamlin most wants a Chase characterized by consistency and a lack of drama.

“I would take fifth every single week for sure,” he said when queried about what it will take to claim his first title this time around. “With double-file restarts and green-white-checkereds, it’s hard to say what’s going to be the average finish of the champion and whether it’s going to be higher or lower. ... I think there’s a lot of different variables you could say, but one thing that beat us last year was looking at that scoreboard mid-race and getting in panic mode. That’s something that we can’t do this year.”

Tom Jensen is the Editor in Chief of SPEED.com, Senior NASCAR Editor at RACER and a contributing Editor for TruckSeries.com. You can follow him online at twitter.com/tomjensen100 and e-mail him at Jensen is the author of “Cheating: The Bad Things Good NASCAR Nextel Cup Racers Do In Pursuit of Speed,” and has appeared on numerous television and radio shows. Jensen is the past President of the National Motorsports Press Association and an NMPA Writer of the Year.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Tom Jensen

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