NASCAR Cup Series

Denny Hamlin after 'Dega: 'We're on house money at this point'

Published Nov. 15, 2016 3:19 p.m. ET

Joe Menzer

Denny Hamlin isn’t used to this.

That much was evident after a number of factors broke his way Sunday in the Hellman’s 500 at Talladega Superspeedway, conspiring to secure his advancement into the Round of 8 in the NASCAR Chase for the Sprint Cup playoffs.

“I really truly believe this is the first really great fortune that we’ve had in a Chase in my 11‑year career,” Hamlin said. “Things just happened well for us. And we went out there and we did our jobs.”

Hamlin finished third in the race, barely edging out Kurt Busch by 0.006 seconds. Had he been beaten to the start-finish line by Busch or had ninth-place finisher Austin Dillon passed one more car, Hamlin would have been eliminated from the Chase and Dillon would have advanced instead.

The two drivers ended up with the same number of points in the Round of 12, but Hamlin’s best finish of third in the round was better than Dillon’s best finish of sixth. That was the tiebreaker that fell Hamlin’s way, keeping his 2016 championship hopes alive.

“We needed some things to fall our way if we didn't win the race. Today things fell our way,” Hamlin said after the race. “The last lap, we went out and earned it.”

Hamlin was the only driver in the four-car Joe Gibbs Racing stable who truly had to earn it Sunday. The other three JGR drivers – Kyle Busch, Matt Kenseth and Carl Edwards – all entered the day with comfortable points cushions in the Chase and it had been decided before the race that they would move to the back of the field and simply try to stay out of trouble.

That left Hamlin with few friends that he could draft with at the 2.66-mile restrictor-plate track that demands it.

“It was very tough to be able to run against guys that had a lot of teammates up front,” said Hamlin, who also had to overcome his ninth pit-road speeding penalty of the season in his No. 11 Toyota. “I knew that was going to be a problem for us all day. But we were able to have just enough there at the end to get past the 41 and get in.”

Now that he’s made it to the Round of 8, the points will be re-set and Hamlin is confident about his championship chances. The remaining Chase field will be cut in half after the next three races at Martinsville, Texas and Phoenix – and then the last four drivers left standing will race for the title in a winner-take-all season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway on Nov. 19.

It helps, he said, that this next round starts at one of his favorite places, the short track at Martinsville. He has won five times there in 21 career starts – more than he’s won anywhere else in NASCAR – and he’ll be able to work with his teammates better again because they’ll all be back on equal footing.

“We all know that Martinsville is where I've made my career for the most part,” Hamlin said. “I feel very confident we can go there and do great things. My teammates are all going to be strong there. They were in the spring.

“So it's new life for us. We're on house money at this point. Honestly, the cards were stacked against us before we entered the day (at Talladega), but now we're moving on and we have a clean slate.”