Denny Hamlin reveals what he told Christopher Bell on OT restart, connects it to No. 20 spin out

Denny Hamlin had the lead late at Dover, but an overtime restart was going to prove tricky. He had to hold off Christopher Bell, among others, if he was to claim his fourth win of the season.

Meanwhile, there was all kinds of math going on. How wet was the track still after an earlier halt? Where were the spots on the track that needed to be avoided? How long could Hamlin hold off drivers on fresher tires?

“Yeah, I’m considering all the factors, right?” he said on the Actions Detrimental podcast. “Is that, OK, we’re going to stay out, I know that. There’s surely going to be some desperate people at the back of the tail end of the lead lap that are just going to stay with us, so we’re at least probably going to have three or four cars buffer. And in eight laps I can hold that off, especially on a clean racetrack after it rained.

“So I felt confident in holding it off for one time. But not multiple, especially when new tires was making some major hay there with the 19 and a few others.”

Denny Hamlin then walked through his thought process on the restart. He had the choice and he asserted it.

“So there’s two places. You have two instances where if you are starting on the outside, you either better clear initially, that’s your initial jump, or you need to be clear off of Turn 2,” Denny Hamlin said. “If you’re not clear off either one of those two, you’ve lost all leverage because the inside car, as we’ve seen, can push you up the racetrack, put you in the fuzz, next thing you know you’re in trouble. Lucky for me I had two teammates that somewhat held their line, so I was fortunate in that instance.”

Denny Hamlin got off to an excellent start. He held his own on the front line and eventually got enough clearance to hold off everyone else into the finish, taking the win.

But it certainly wasn’t guaranteed. In fact, Hamlin had to rely on a little help from Bell to avoid a wreck.

“Now we made contact with all of them. I think I saw smoke off me and the 20 when we took off,” Denny Hamlin said. “Like just taking off we were side by side, smoke rolling off the tires because we were making contact. A lot of it was because me, I was running down the track because there was a big water spot off of Turn 4. So while I’m accelerating I don’t want to run through that water, get wheels spin, next thing you know he gets the momentum. So I’m trying to squeeze him down the track a little bit to avoid the water. So we’re making contact all the way around.

“Then 4 obviously he’s coming up the track, I see him, I can feel him. Like I can feel the air in the car, like the pressure inside, so I know he’s getting closer and closer to me. And at that point I’m like, ‘Please, just don’t run into me. Don’t clean us out here.’ And I think that what caused C-Bell to spin was he was trying to keep it off of us. Doing the right thing.”