The first race of the Chase did not go the way Denny Hamlin was hoping for on Saturday at Darlington.
Heading into the Chase as the top car in the standings and the favorite to finally win his first championship, Hamlin was hoping to extend his lead on the field with a strong finish at the Track Too Tough to Tame.
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While the No. 11 ran out front to start the race, a poor pit stop later put him out in the middle of the field, where he made contact with Michael McDowell. That contact caused a bit of damage that kept him from the speed he had maintained early in the day, and Hamlin ultimately had to settle for an 18th-place finish.
After the race, Hamlin was frustrated, as he felt his car was just starting to peak when the contact occurred.
“Certainly not the finish we were hoping for. Good first couple of stages. Just got to where our car was actually the best right before that wreck in stage three,” Hamlin said. “We certainly made gains on it all day. It was really good in the short run, we got it really good in the long run by the time that third stage came, but never got to see it through.”
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When asked about his contact with McDowell, Hamlin didn’t run for an excuse, saying that it was all a part of the game.
“It’s a professional sport. You can’t have big mistakes,” he said. “We just had a tough pit stop there that set us back from third to about 20th, and once we got back there, you’re with guys that are a little bit more aggressive and don’t really care about the points.”
Despite the 18th-place finish, Hamlin did his best to look ahead to next week with optimism.
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“We’re still leading. We’ve just got to go to the next race track and execute at a high level. It starts in practice. We’ll do our best to execute a much better day next week than we did this week.”
Hamlin was hopeful that a win at Darlington could put him even further ahead of the field in the Chase standings. While that didn’t happen, he did salvage a pretty good result all things considered.
18th is further down the running order than he wanted to finish, but by taking third-place stage points in the first two stages, Hamlin was able to mitigate the gains the rest of the field made on him in the Chase.
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