Denny Hamlin scores another quiet top 10

When Denny Hamlin finds some short-run speed, he’ll be dangerous.

Hamlin overcame a pit road snafu to finish sixth in Sunday’s Auto Club 400, lowering his average finish through five Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series races to 6.8. Hamlin is also sixth in the series standings after Sunday’s race.

But his team still has work to do to contend with the fastest cars in the series.

“We just had a mistake on our pit stop,” Hamlin said. “I flew through my box again. Once I got that remedied, it looked like were some somewhere around a fourth- or fifth-place car-even a third-place at times. In the long run, we were exceptional, but we were just too slow on the short run to keep up.

“Those guys would pull seven seconds on us, and we’d maintain after that and gain a little. We were letting these guys stretch a little on us too much in the short run. Overall a good day for our FedEx Camry, but we wanted to get a top five there. We were really in it there at the end of the race with the leaders, but we didn’t have enough time.”

Greg Engle
About Greg Engle 7421 Articles
Greg is a published award winning sportswriter who spent 23 years combined active and active reserve military service, much of that in and around the Special Operations community. Greg is the author of "The Nuts and Bolts of NASCAR: The Definitive Viewers' Guide to Big-Time Stock Car Auto Racing" and has been published in major publications across the country including the Los Angeles Times, the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He was also a contributor to Chicken Soup for the NASCAR Soul, published in 2010, and the Christmas edition in 2016. He wrote as the NASCAR, Formula 1, Auto Reviews and National Veterans Affairs Examiner for Examiner.com and has appeared on Fox News. He holds a BS degree in communications, a Masters degree in psychology and is currently a PhD candidate majoring in psychology. He is currently the weekend Motorsports Editor for Autoweek.