NASCAR Cup Series

Denny Hamlin needs to pick up pace now

Published Oct. 12, 2010 1:00 a.m. ET

Larry McReynolds

If you saw or read Denny Hamlin’s postrace comments following Sunday’s NASCAR Sprint Cup race at Auto Club Speedway, you can tell that despite being only 36 points out of the lead with 40 percent of the Chase for the Sprint Cup completed, he knows he and his Joe Gibbs Racing team have to start running better.

They’ve actually only had one really good race and that was at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, the first race in the 2010 Chase.

What they have been fortunate to live off of is all the bonus points they accumulated for winning all those races in the regular season. They started with 60 bonus points, 10 more than current championship leader Jimmie Johnson, but Denny has said it – they have to get running better.

Hamlin’s and the Kevin Harvick’s Richard Childress Racing group are the two teams that I really think have to raise their game if they want to keep up with Johnson. You just can’t keep turning in good, solid finishes with only six races left in the season. That won’t win you this championship.

I truly believe we are down to five players with six remaining events in 2010. They are Jimmie Johnson, Denny Hamlin, Kevin Harvick, Jeff Gordon and Tony Stewart. Kurt Busch is next in line, 140 points back. Now it is not necessarily the 140 point margin that takes him out of the equation, but more the guys ahead of him that he has to get past that will hurt his effort.

See, it’s one thing to be 140 points back and second in the points. That means you are only chasing one guy. In Kurt’s case, he is 140 points back and chasing five guys. Even at 107 points back, I don’t think we can count Tony Stewart completely out of the picture just yet. Other than the race at Dover, Tony and the Stewart-Haas Racing crowd were a top-five, race-winning contender.

Obviously the guy on a roll is Jimmie Johnson. His Hendrick Motorsports team is running up front, leading laps and getting those valuable bonus points. Let’s face it, lord only knows what kind of points lead Jimmie would have right now if he hadn’t had a loose lug nut at Loudon back at the first race of the Chase.

Going back to Sunday at California, I find it ironic that it was announced that the track would only have one race next year and then Sunday we had as good of a crowd as we’ve had there in a long time. I still maintain going back to one event a year on the Sprint Cup schedule will help sell that place out again.

I can’t tell you why because I just don’t know. What I do know is ever since they went to two Cup races a year at Fontana, they’ve never been the same. It’s like adding the second race has become the Achilles heel of that place.

It was a great race there, too. I still am of the opinion that we have not had a bad race yet in the 2010 Chase. We’ve got great racing and the closest, best Chase we’ve ever had.