What a difference a year makes. Two races into the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs, Denny Hamlin was six points below the cut line entering the elimination race at Bristol Motor Speedway.
Hamlin had finished 24th in the Playoff opener at Atlanta and 23rd the following week at Watkins Glen, needing a solid performance at Thunder Valley just to advance to the next round.
With a fourth-place result, Hamlin vaulted to sixth in the Playoff standings and staved off elimination until the penultimate race of the season at Martinsville.
This year, Hamlin comes to Bristol fresh from his fifth victory of the season, at World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway, knowing he’ll be part of the Round of 12.
The circumstances are different, and so is the mind-set, no matter how often a driver will tell you the approach to every race is the same.
“It was definitely different,” Hamlin said of last year’s effort. “I try to approach each week the same when it comes to my process, but now certainly, your mind plays games with you, though. There is certainly a different mind-set when you are locked in versus being below the cut or being near the cut, so without a doubt, I’m resting much, much easier this year in the Playoffs in general.
“I’m way more loose with it—whatever the results are, the results are. So that helps, and on top of that, winning—it just makes me even looser. Certainly, yes, anytime I go into a cut race and I’m close to the cut, I have to pull myself back to not think about the things that I don’t control, and that is typically what I think drivers would say when they get in these scenarios where they are facing elimination.
“They are worrying about all of the things they can’t control. It is certainly a different mind-set.”
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