Denny Hamlin breaks down late pit stop that gave him the win at Richmond
During the final pit stop ahead of overtime in Sunday’s Toyota Owners 400, Denny Hamlin sat P3 behind Martin Truex Jr. and Joey Logano.
Hamlin came off pit road P1, a testament to his pit crew which is off to a dominant start in 2024. That final pit stop changed the entire race, as Hamlin held off Truex, Logano and Kyle Larson to pick up his 53rd-career victory and second of the season.
Hamlin, speaking with SiriusXM NASCAR Radio after the race, gave credit to his pit crew for helping him win the race.
“Yeah, certainly we wanted to have a Toyota victory and it looked like Martin had this thing pretty much locked up until that last caution,” Hamlin said. “So, when you’ve got great Toyotas like we’ve got, you’ve got an extra bullet in the chamber. I knew that when we went to pit road, we were gonna have a shot to come out with the lead, just with the way the pit crew’s been performing this year. They’re the ones that honestly won this victory for us.
“It was 100% key. I pushed everything I could with my lights on pit road, probably was the fastest I’ve gone down pit road all day long. I knew that it was going to take all of us stacking good times and good metrics on that last stop to come out with the lead. It’s one thing to try and overtake one, but to take over two, you’ve got to be top of the chart. The pit crew I could tell how fast it was going about halfway through and I knew that oh boy, they’re gonna give me a shot, just don’t stall it leaving the stall.”
Denny Hamlin concedes he left a ‘few feet early’ on race-winning restart at Richmond
Hamlin’s win, however, didn’t come without controversy.
Truex accused Hamlin of leaving the restart zone early. Though NASCAR reviewed the restart and said it was “awful close,” they deemed it to be a good restart. Hamlin, speaking on his “Actions Detrimental” podcast on Monday, conceded that he “went pretty early in the zone.”
“I went pretty early in the zone,” Hamlin said. “… It’s a restart zone. Certainly, if you fire in a zone that they know you’re going to fire in, let’s not even say zone — in a spot — if they know you’re going to fire in a spot, they can actually fire before you. I concede that on TV, it looks worse than what it felt like in the car. Now, a lot of the reason of that is that when I’m restarting the race, I’m not looking at the flagman, I’m not looking at my dash, I’m not looking at anything. All I’m looking at is my mirror and my side peripheral.”