Denny Hamlin’s day at Daytona on Saturday got off to a rough start when just a few laps into the race his rear camera stopped working.
There was no easy fix for the issue, meaning that Hamlin had to get through the remainder of the race with drastically less information than his competitors.
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“I use it mostly to see what lanes are coming, when it’s appropriate to switch lanes,” Hamlin explained on his podcast Actions Detrimental after the race. “Relying only on the spotter for that just made me a little more hesitant certainly.”
Hamlin explained that he was unable to switch to using his regular mirror because it had been moved to a different part of the car to help with his vision on his right rear quarter panel.
“It’s mounted in a vastly different spot,” he said. “So I put it in a spot where I want it to be my secondary protocol for when I clear myself off my right rear quarter panel. In order for them to move the thing back to where, okay it’s now back to my standard mirror, it takes a different bracket.”
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Hamlin said that he had never suffered a camera outage in five years, and that the handicap left him racing at roughly 70% capacity compared to his fellow drivers. How would his strategy have been different had he had his camera working through the entire race?
“I would’ve been more aggressive earlier on,” Hamlin said. “By the end of the race though, I felt okay with it. I’m like, screw it, I don’t care, and if we wreck, whatever. I just didn’t want to cause a wreck. You know how hard that is to explain to a competitor? ‘Man, I’m sorry I cut in front of you, I didn’t have a mirror.’ They would have said, ‘Hey idiot, don’t freakin’ race if you don’t have a mirror.'”
“I ain’t trying to make new enemies right now,” Hamlin concluded.
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Indeed, the last thing Hamlin needs right now is new enemies. As things stand, the No. 11 is atop the points standings as the Chase begins this weekend at Darlington. Hamlin is the favorite to win the championship. If he does, he would finally get rid of the not-so-desirable honor of best driver without a title.
He has 10 races left to close the deal.
Watch: Race Rewind: Preece wins his way into The Chase at Daytona
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