Denny Hamlin breaks down leading strategy that resulted in P4 finish at Chicago Street Race

Denny Hamlin came home P4 during this past weekend’s Chicago Street Race. A late strategy call to pit with a myriad of other Toyotas led to the No. 11 notching a top five at a track where he’s not usually considered much of a factor.

While he didn’t have anything for eventual winner Shane van Gisbergen, Hamlin was more than satisfied with his result. He broke down what went into the strategy his team deployed during the latest episode of his Actions Detrimental podcast.

“We were the leader of the group that thought they could make it after the Josh Berry wreck,” Hamlin stated, regarding his strategy late in the race in Chicago. “There was a group that pitted when they saw (Berry) sitting there. There were five cars that pitted. (Crew chief Chris Gayle) was like, ‘With a caution, we’re fine, but save gas as if that caution’s not coming. Save us a lap and a half or so of gas.’

“My job at that point was, ‘All right, get ahead of all the people that just pitted,’ which I did. I passed those five cars, with the exception of [Tyler] Reddick. … We got the track-position by doing that. But, you know, we pitted the same amount of times as SVG. We pit twice during the course of that race. So, we didn’t do anything special, strategy-wise.

“We just pitted once we got right at our field-window, just like everybody else did. We just really did a good job of getting spots, passing in the long run, passing on the short restarts. Like, it was one of our better road course races.”

Hamlin certainly is never the favorite when it comes to road courses, or street courses for that matter, but it was an impressive showing from the Joe Gibbs Racing wheelman. Now, he’ll have another shot at the track type, as the Cup Series is heading to Sonoma this coming weekend.

He’s never won at the California-based track. His best finish is second, which came in 2016. That’s when Hamlin came close, but Tony Stewart wasn’t going to take no for an answer. Smoke wasn’t the better driver at that point of his career, but he wanted it more, for sure.

Unfortunately, it’s been a rough go of things for Denny Hamlin at the track since the advent of the NextGen car, as he hasn’t finished above P31 since 2021. We’ll see what’s in store for this weekend, and if the momentum he gained in Chicago lends itself to a better finish at Sonoma for the veteran wheelman.