With one lap remaining, car owner Joe Gibbs slapped crew chief Mike Ford on the shoulder and descended from the pit box to watch another of his teams celebrate in Victory Lane. Emotionless crewmen began the task of gathering up hoses and equipment. Little was said over the radio, other than the spotter telling Danny Hamlin to park his No. 11 Toyota behind the transporter in the garage area. By the time it got there, the only sign of the driver was a helmet dangling from the roll cage.
He didn’t lead 381 laps, didn’t suffer the slow agony of air draining out of one of his tires, didn’t endure a massive, public heartbreak as he did last spring. But that doesn’t mean Saturday night didn’t hurt. The fact that Hamlin left Richmond International Raceway without a word, surely boiling with frustration after another effort in which he led the most laps on his hometown race track yet again was left with nothing to show for it, spoke volumes. NASCAR.com
Hamlin led five times for 148 laps in the Russ Friedman 400, and he was in front when he came to pit road in the 275th lap. But Hamlin’s crew had trouble with the right-front tire, losing two or three lug nuts in the process.
The lengthy pit stop caused Hamlin to lose seven positions when the field lined up for the restart, and he never returned to the lead.
In seven Sprint Cup tries at Richmond, Hamlin has led laps in every race, but none more than in this event in 2008. Last May, Hamlin led 381 of 407 laps but was foiled by a failing tire within sniffing distance of the finish.
“You know it’s frustrating for him,” said Tony Stewart, a former teammate of Hamlin’s at Joe Gibbs Racing. “I think there’s some satisfaction at the same time with knowing how good he’s been every time we’ve been here, especially last year. Last year was probably the ultimate heartbreaker. I’m not sure that it’s ever going to feel that bad for him again. … You don’t run that good here, though, and go the rest of your life without winning. He’s going to win multiple races here because he’s that good here. He’s got this place figured out.” USA Today
It couldn’t have been the homecoming weekend Hamlin had envisioned. He didn’t get the chance to compete in Friday night’s Nationwide race, an event in which he was defending champion, because Joe Gibbs Racing had only two cars available. With Joey Logano needing as much seat time as possible and Busch running for a championship, Hamlin was the odd man out. Then came Saturday, and a pit stop under caution following a stretch during which Hamlin had led 125 of the previous 174 laps. He came in leading. His right-front tire changer dropped three lug nuts. He came out seventh, and never sniffed the front again. Although the team called it simply an error, more than a few crewmen have had issues this season with a longer wheel stud that requires a little more oomph with the impact wrench.
Either way, the damage was done. Even though Hamlin was still in the top 10, seemingly within striking distance, traffic and accidents precluded him from making up any ground. His frustration was evident over the radio. “With this traffic, Mike,” he told his crew chief, “I can’t do s—-!” By the time the track-record-tying 15 cautions abated and the cars finally began spacing themselves out, it was too late.
“We didn’t work in traffic as well as we needed to. I don’t think we had as good a car as everybody thought, or we would have been able to make some of that up, and we didn’t. If you’re going to get a bad [pit stop], that was the time not to have one. That was the exact time in the race where people start setting up for the end. That’s when you don’t want to give up the track positions at that point in the race, and we couldn’t get it back,” Ford said.
“You saw when we got in traffic, we didn’t really move forward. If we could run laps, no one could pass you. With these cars, it’s so close. Track position is everything. We couldn’t make any ground. It ended up a major, major mistake that you couldn’t rebound from.” NASCAR.com
| 
|