BROOKLYN, Mich. — Denny Hamlin was starting to get a little uncomfortable with a winless streak that had stretched to 16 NASCAR Sprint Cup races.
“If I go (even) eight weeks without winning, I’m wondering what the heck is going on,” said Hamlin, who snapped his streak Sunday with a tight victory over Matt Kenseth in the Heluva Good! 400 at Michigan International Speedway.
Hamlin hadn’t won since Nov. 7, when he was dueling with Jimmie Johnson for the 2010 championship. He would end up second to Johnson in the standings, and that Texas victory was his eighth of the 2010 season and 16th of his six-year Cup career.
Since then? Nothing until Sunday’s somewhat surprising victory in Michigan. Hamlin had been coming close, with three top-10 finishes in six races.
“I feel like over the last six to seven weeks, we’ve been as good as anyone,” said Hamlin, who won June 13 Michigan race last year. “It feels good to get a win after sneaking up on everyone. When we go to these race tracks that we’ve won at before, everyone expects us to win. We just had little bugs that had kept us from doing that. This one we just snuck in there.”
Finishing third was Hamlin’s Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Kyle Busch. Chevy-driving Paul Menard had his best finish of the season in fourth and points leader Carl Edwards was fifth.
Hamlin took advantage of a late caution that came out after Dale Earnhardt Jr. hit the wall on Lap.191. To that point, the main question was who — mostly among leaders Edwards, Hamlin, Busch, Menard or Kenseth — would have enough gas to make it to the finish.
But the caution took care of any concern that another of this season’s races would be decided by fuel mileage. Every car on the lead lap went to pit road during the caution — including several near the back who might have benefited by taking the risk of staying out with the hope of having enough gas.
But when they came out, Hamlin had the lead. He kept it on the restart on Lap.195 and held off Kenseth at the end.
It was the best Hamlin’s Toyota had looked all day. It spent much of the race well behind leaders, who usually were either Greg Biffle (68 laps), Busch (59) or Edwards (30).
“That’s usually some of the best ways to win them,” said Hamlin. “It’s when people don’t expect you and haven’t seen you all day.”
Kenseth was on Hamlin’s bumper for most of the final two laps. Before the caution, he’d been worried about running out of gas and was easy on the throttle.
“I’m happy we had a caution and we didn’t run out of gas and we got to race to the end,” Kenseth said. “That was no fun running half throttle.”
On the restart, Kenseth hurt his chances by spinning his tires, allowing Hamlin to get a clean break.
The weekend didn’t begin smoothly for Hamlin or teammates Busch and Joey Logano. Each JGR team was found by NASCAR to not have submitted their oil pans for approval Friday morning, an offense that got the oil pans confiscated and which might lead to penalties this week. Questions about the incident stayed with the drivers for most of the weekend.
Saying his goal is to finish among the top five of the points standings heading into the Chase, Hamlin moved from 12th to ninth with the victory. Edwards increased his lead to 20 points over Kevin Harvick, who jumped two positions into second. Jimmie Johnson, who had a problem with his sway bar early and finished a lap down and 27th, dropped from second to fifth.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
