Denny Hamlin rolled off fourth at Las Vegas Motor Speedway and crossed the line eighth, but he spent almost all of the race much further back in the field.
The issues came early and often for the No. 11 team. They first came in the first green-flag pit cycle midway through Stage 1, when a slow stop cost meant Hamlin fell out of the top ten. Hamlin ultimately finished eleventh in the first stage. Then, crew chief Chris Gabehart chose not to pit at the stage break to get to the front.
While eventual-winner Joey Logano was able to benefit from staying out on old tires in a green-flag pit cycle, staying out on the restart after a caution did not work as well for Hamlin as the field swarmed around him and the No. 11 fell back as far as 27th. From there, after finally getting much-needed fresh rubber midway through Stage 2, he fought to stay on the lead lap and ultimately finished the stage in 19th.
The hits just seemed to keep coming in the stage break when a very slow pit stop, with Hamlin initially stopping short and then his crew failing to tighten the left-rear tire forcing him to reverse back into the stall, cost the team time again.
But it was the last blow before a monumental recovery as Hamlin drove through the field in Stage 3, breaking into the top fifteen with about 50 laps to go in the 267-lap event. Choosing to stay out rather than take tires, the same strategy as Logano, worked in this stage, and Hamlin was able to climb within the top five briefly before ultimately being overtaken by a few drivers on fresh tires to finish eighth.
“Yeah, just not a clean day. That certainly kind of sums it up. But you’ll have that, and we’ll just do the best we can do have the best finish,” Hamlin said after getting out of his car. “Just part of it.”
While eighth on track is not a bad result and was ultimately the fourth-best result for a Playoff contender at Vegas, Hamlin failed to pick up any valuable stage points. But with good runs for some of his postseason competitors and Joey Logano taking away one possible spot in the Championship 4 because of the automatic eligibility from his win, Hamlin leaves with a much bigger gap to the cutline than he entered.
Heading into the final two rounds at Homestead-Miami and Martinsville, Hamlin’s eight-point deficit has been widened to 27 points, a big margin. His first priority for the next two races is not to make these same mistakes.
“I don’t know where we’re at, but certainly we’re not running quite as strong as we were earlier this year and we’re certainly not as clean as we were. So just got to clean it up,” Hamlin acknowledged.
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