A pit road speeding penalty, and a hard-charging Chase Elliott; niether were able to prevent Denny Hamlin from doing something that he had done 60 times in his NASCAR Cup Series career prior to Sunday’s Pennzoil 400 presented by Jiffy Lube at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
As Hamlin crossed the finish line at the conclusion of the 267th lap of Sunday’s race, Hamlin, who led a race-high 134 laps in the 267-lap contest, collected the 61st victory of his illustrious NASCAR Cup Series career. Hamlin was thankful to his No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing team, and Toyota for providing him the tools he needed to succeed on Sunday.
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“Being part of Toyota and Joe Gibbs Racing, that helps the situation. Over the last few races here, had a dominant car. Makes me look good when I can drive cars like this,” Hamlin said. “I got to thank the whole team. They’re the ones that made all this happen.”
This is the first win for Hamlin since his heartbreaking defeat for the NASCAR Cup Series championship last November, and his first win since a heart-wrenching off-season, where Hamlin’s father, Dennis Hamlin, lost his life in a house fire.
Hamlin would embrace his mother, Mary Lou, who survived the offseason house fire, in front of the crowd on the frontstretch of Las Vegas Motor Speedway following his latest win.
“I mean, I knew it took a few weeks to feel like driving,” Hamlin admitted after his taxing offseason. “Over the last couple weeks, I definitely regained my love of it, got refocused. These are great opportunities for us. I mean, this is a family sport. My family obviously had so much sacrifice to help me get here. Now that I’ve grown, generations of Hamlins following me. It’s great Mom gets to see this. I know Dad’s still saying, ‘That’s my boy.’ Hell of a day.”
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The win allowed Hamlin to break a tie with Kevin Harvick for the 10th place all-time on the NASCAR Cup Series winslist. While he continues to chase that elusive first championship, Hamlin is proud of where his name is in the record books.
“My name stands out amongst — there’s the legends of the sport. I feel very fortunate to be on the list,” Hamlin stated. “Those guys were far more talented than I have ever thought about being. I just work really hard. I still to this day work really hard at my craft to try to continue to get better. Days like today certainly make me feel happy about where I’m at in the sport still and what I can still do.”
Chase Elliott put in an incredible effort over the final 20-or-so laps as he reeled Hamlin’s No. 11 Toyota in, but was unable to get close enough to mount a true challenge. Elliott, the driver of the No. 9 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet, would cross the finish line 0.502 seconds behind Hamlin.
While it’s hard to not be upset with a runner-up finish, as second-place is the first loser in NASCAR, Elliott was proud of the effort because of how much better the finish was than how he ran for the majority of the race.
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“Yeah, man, as bummed as I am to come up that close to a win, I have to kind of bring myself back to a reality check, how much better we ran today than we’ve been running,” Elliott explained.
Elliott continued, “I’m balancing that, right? Obviously, these things are hard to win. We had a great opportunity to do it. But really proud of the effort throughout the week, preparation, and yesterday. Just kind of fighting through a not-so-good day. Getting up there in the mix with the guys that win a lot of these races anymore. Really proud of that.”
William Byron, the winner of the second Stage of the race, would come home with a solid third-place result, but his restart on the final run of the race likely ended his bid to win the race.
“Yeah, I thought we were in a pretty good restart lane. Everything went well. I got super loose into three, got in a bad spot. I hate that because I feel like it hurt my tires, heated them up,” Byron said. “It was hard to make ground up after that.”
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Polesitter Christopher Bell was unable to score his first career Las Vegas win, as he ended the day in the fourth position.
Ty Gibbs, who came into the race on a two-race fourth-place finishing streak, ended the day in fifth, after he had to rally from a pit road speeding penalty in Stage 2. Gibbs was able to work his way back through the field, and he now has three consecutive top-five finishes after Sunday’s race at Las Vegas.
Chris Buescher, Kyle Larson, Chase Briscoe, Bubba Wallace, and Brad Keselowski rounded out the top-10 finishers in the event.
Briscoe, who spent the majority of the race a lap down, after an early-race pit road speeding penalty, was able to get back onto the lead lap in the final Stage of the race, and once he was there, he was abe to claw through the field. He just ran out of time to convert the rally into a top-five finish, but he would nab a much-needed eighth-place result.
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Tyler Reddick, who won the opening three races of the season, continued to hang onto the NASCAR Cup Series point lead with a 13th-place finish on Sunday. Reddick exits Sin City with a 61-point advantage over Bubba Wallace, his 23XI Racing teammate, for the top spot in the point standings.
Ryan Blaney, who won at Phoenix, fell one spot to third, and with his win, Hamlin launched eight spots forward in the standings to fourth, 78 points behind Reddick.
With a last-place finish, Shane van Gisbergen now finds himself on the NASCAR Cup Series Chase for the Cup cutline, and with 21 races left until the Chase begins, SVG has no room for error as Daniel Suarez and A.J. Allmendinger, the first two drivers outside the cutline, hold the same point total (117 points) as the driver of the No. 97 Trackhouse Racing Chevrolet.
Next up for the NASCAR Cup Series is the Goodyear 400 at Darlington Raceway on Sunday, March 22. That race will be televised on FS1 with television coverage set to kick off at 3:00 PM ET. The Motor Racing Network (MRN) and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio will provide the radio broadcast of the event at Darlington.
This article was originally published on www.si.com/onsi/racing-america as Denny Hamlin Rebounds From Pit Penalty For Cup Series Las Vegas Win.
