Denny Hamlin halts Chase woes by beating Jimmie Johnson at Martinsville
The fact that the name of the race was the Tums Fast Relief 500 seemed only fitting, given the fact that the guy celebrating in victory lane was Denny Hamlin.
Relief? This guy and his team needed it in the worst way. By the bottle, by the bucket, by the bushel.
Hamlin, 28, was practically out of this year’s Chase For The Sprint Cup before it got started. Sure, there was the second-place finish at New Hampshire early on, and a fifth-place run two weeks later at Kansas. Hope ran deep.
But those two efforts were sandwiched around a dreary 22nd-place run at Dover. And then the bottom fell out and Hamlin dropped from third in points to sixth to 11th after finishes of 37th at California and 42nd at Charlotte.
Hamlin was quickly becoming one of those “Hey, what ever happened to?” guys, drivers who qualify for the playoffs, only to quickly be forgotten when their fortunes sour.
And yet, lo and behold, Hamlin and his Joe Gibbs Racing team rolled into tiny Martinsville Speedway and laid a whipping on the sport’s super team. Didn’t trick ’em.
Didn’t outfox ’em. Just went out and whipped ’em.
Jimmie Johnson finished second to Hamlin, and no, that’s not exactly the beginning of the end for the three-time defending series champion. Johnson’s No. 48 Hendrick Motorsports team is still the team to beat, and it’s looking more and more unlikely anyone will do that as the weeks progress.
But for one sunny fall afternoon, Hamlin went toe to toe with the six-time Martinsville winner, and emerged the victor. For a change, it was Johnson in the rearview mirror instead of the other way around.
It may be a small step in the overall scheme of the Chase, but it’s a big step in the scheme of Hamlin’s No. 11 team, which saw its driver climb two positions, to ninth, in the point standings.
“It seems like whenever [we] have a tough week, whether it be California or Charlotte, it affects me until about Tuesday, and then … you’re starting to gear up towards the next week,” Hamlin said. “Then you’ve got to reassess your goals.
“I told [crew chief] Mike [Ford] at the beginning of this race, ‘Let’s just get back in the top five in points, because it’s a shame for us to be 11th in points, as competitive as we’ve been. The few guys in front of us hadn’t either won a race or hadn’t been competitive for the most part, and we’ve been there every single week. The stats look terrible.
“So that’s frustrating. But we reassessed our goals after Charlotte to get back in the top five, and I think that’s feasible for us.”
If he and his team continue to perform as well as they did at Martinsville, it certainly would seem likely. Hamlin led three times for 206 of 501 laps, and held off Johnson and fellow Chase driver Juan Pablo Montoya despite three restarts in the final 53 laps.
Each time Hamlin would manage to put some distance between himself, the hard-charging Johnson and the continually surprising Montoya, a caution would appear and the field would be gathered back up, with Johnson, Montoya, Jeff Gordon and others in hot pursuit.
Hamlin had been in this situation before, battling Johnson earlier this year on the same track late in the race, only to eventually get moved aside like a pesky little brother. Hamlin admitted a bit of concern, “but I knew I just had to get a good start,” he said. He also knew that if he restarted those last few times in third gear, “I was going to lug a little bit, but it was going to make him have to shift twice to my one time, and obviously it got us a good jump.”
Johnson’s second-place finish was his 15th top-10 in 16 starts on the rough-and-tumble half-mile track. He led five times for 164 laps. With teammate Mark Martin finishing eighth, Johnson increased his points lead from 90 to 118 with four races remaining.
As for Hamlin, Johnson said he had, “one chance.”
“He caught the curb with about 40 [laps] to go, and lost some drive off [Turn] 2,” Johnson said. “I got inside of him, and I thought, ‘Man, I’ve seen this movie before.’
“I got inside of him and he came to block the position like he did in the spring. … I wasn’t in there far enough to stay … so I backed out of it and I think I actually hit the curb and screwed up my line. That was my one chance.”
Montoya, Kyle Busch and Gordon completed the top five. Sixth through 10th were Jamie McMurray, Ryan Newman, Martin, Tony Stewart and Kevin Harvick.
Gordon is now 150 points behind Johnson, while Stewart is 192 and Montoya 200 behind.
Montoya says his chances may have taken a hit, but he isn’t ready to crown Johnson champion just yet.
“It doesn’t matter,” the Earnhardt Ganassi driver said. “You’ve got to say the 48 team is doing an amazing job, and they deserve everything they’re doing right now.
“Do we want to beat them? Yeah, we want to beat them. But it’s not over.
“You go to Talladega and he might have a bad race, or even the race after. He might blow a motor, have a bad pit stop. There’s still a lot of racing to go, so anything can happen. We’ve just got to keep running and hope for the best.”
