June 14, 2011
By Doug Demmons
What was supposed to be Denny Hamlin’s year is turning out to not be Denny Hamlin’s year.
And just when it looked like things were turning around.
A season that bottomed out at Bristol and Fontana with finishes of 33rd and 39th improved with a second at Richmond, top 10s at Darlington and Charlotte and third last week at Kansas.
Pocono seemed a likely place for his first win of the season. Hamlin won at Pocono last year -- his fourth win in an eight-win season.
And for the first half of the race Sunday Hamlin had the field covered, leading 76 of the first 101 laps.
That’s when a pit road mistake by the No. 11 crew and a two-tire strategy by the No. 42 of Juan Pablo Montoya put him back in the field.
The call by Montoya’s crew chief Brian Pattie seemed a strange one at Pocono, where four tires are the norm for long green-flag runs.
But then, Montoya lost the Brickyard race at Indianapolis last year on a late pit stop by taking four tires when nearly everyone else took two. Pattie was apparently not going to make that mistake again.
"We gave up about 10 seconds for the first green flag stop to the 42 and he short pitted so that made it look even worse," Hamlin said Sunday. "We were just a little bit off on sequence. Those guys would gain a lot while we were out there on older tires.
"But then when we left pit road and had a flat tire -- that is just not your day," he said. "When it did that, it sheared the tire and wrapped it around the housing and broke the brakes lines so I had no brakes -- it was just a slew of problems there at the end."
Hamlin ended up 19th on a day when he probably should have won. That’s not lethal to a season but it isn’t a good sign.
It turns a momentum builder into yet another week of trying to figure out what went wrong.
Hamlin is by no means out of it. He’s 12th in points, which is enough to qualify for the Chase as a wild card. But it’s a precarious position. Any driver behind him who scores a win and finishes in the top 20 in points could knock him out.
For Hamlin it’s going to have to be about winning from here on out.
Doug Demmons is a writer and editor for the Birmingham News ~ he writes daily and weekly auto racing columns ranging from NASCAR to open wheel to Formula One, local tracks and more... you can read Doug's columns online at Blog of Tommorow
Follow Doug on Twitter: @dougdemmons
The thoughts and ideas expressed by this writer or any other writer on Insider Racing News, are not necessarily the views of the staff and/or management of IRN.
You can contact Doug Demmons at ....
