Denny Hamlin looked like a legitimate contender to win the NASCAR Cup Series race on Sunday at Michigan International Speedway until a self-inflicted mistake siphoned most of the speed from his Toyota right before the race was rained out to Monday.
Hamlin led the field to green but was quickly overtaken by Kyle Larson. Hamlin then spent the first 32 laps trying to find a way around Larson but that opened up a slipstream for Bubba Wallace to pass both of them.
Then Hamlin spent the next several laps working over Wallace in the same fashion he had Larson but put himself in a bad aerodynamic spot and spun into the infield.
“The car felt great,” Hamlin said. “I just got myself in a really bad aero spot and all my grip went away in an instance. It’s unfortunate. I was just trying to get some runs going. It took me forever to work over Larson and then I was trying to work over the 23 and just got too high there.”
What happened on Sunday?
In real time, Hamlin thought his car was fine and the photographs mostly supported that until crew chief Chris Gabehart got an in-person look on Sunday evening when the rain came.
The Joe Gibbs Racing No. 11 team knew it would be a struggle to drive the car back towards the front and Hamlin ultimately salvaged a ninth-place finish.
“My car was bad,” Hamlin said “It was really, really bad. It was tore up. He sent me some pictures overnight that just did not look good. It’s unfortunate, man. I hate that, that I did that to the team. Certainly, set us back.”
Gabehart did his best to paint a positive picture overnight and they still got a top-10 out of it but Hamlin was still disappointed because they thought it was a potential race winning car.
“I still was optimistic because Chris is going to make sure he doesn’t get me total Denny-downer information before the race starts,” Hamlin added. “He was like, ‘We’re not going to get it back to where it was, but we can get it somewhat close.’
“Obviously after we started there, we were not close. We then just had to make adjustments to the car handling-wise to pick up the second that we did in the second half of that race.
“I am going to run quickly out of here with my ninth.”
Why it matters
Hamlin is still in a close battle for the regular season championship. The top-10 in points at the end of the regular season are all awarded playoff points to be used in each round they are still active contenders.
- 15 playoff points
- 10 playoff points
- 8 playoff points
- 7 playoff points
- 6 playoff points
- 5 playoff points
- 4 playoff points
- 3 playoff points
- 2 playoff points
- 1playoff point
Here are the updated standings after Reddick won the race and Larson crashed out.
Tyler Reddick
Chase Elliott -10
Denny Hamlin -28
Kyle Larson -32
Matt Weaver is a Motorsports Insider for Sportsnaut. Follow him on Twitter .
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