NASCAR Cup Series

Denny Hamlin's pit strategy surprised winner

Published Mar. 31, 2010 6:49 p.m. ET

Jeff Hammond

Man I feel bad for Jeff Gordon after Monday’s race at Martinsville Speedway. I felt there at the end that he was finally going to be the benefactor of what appeared to be a bad call. I thought all the stars had aligned for him to finally get another win. I think if you watched the post-race interview, you could see the hurt on his face as how bad he wanted to win.

We always tell you that winning a race in NASCAR is not easy. Your name might be Jeff Gordon, you might have 80-plus wins and you might be a four-time champion, but there are never any guarantees.

I think we are finding NASCAR in a really unique situation these days. Never before in the history of the sport have we had double-file restarts combined with multiple green-white-checker finishes. My point is pit strategy is going out the window. It also looks like track position is not what it used to be.

Now from the crew chief perspective, this is going to drive a lot of those guys crazy. A couple years ago, Jimmie Johnson shouldn’t have been able to do what he did. What happened Monday with Denny Hamlin shouldn’t have been able to happen. They put on four tires with only five laps to go -- and won the race. Now I have watched Tony Stewart try that a few times in years past but it never worked. Why? Well, because there weren’t double-file restarts then.

Let’s face it; Denny Hamlin showed us what old-fashioned racing is all about. It’s what got him the win. The thing I loved was it was beating and banging, but no wrecking. You saw the No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing team do something that shouldn’t be possible, but still he came out on top.

Now, it wasn’t the first time I have seen bump-and-runs for the win at Martinsville. I remember in 1987 when DW was running third going into Turn 3 with Terry Labonte and Dale Earnhardt Sr. ahead of him. DW and Terry got together. Terry then hit Earnhardt and they both went up the track and here came DW home with his first win for Rick Hendrick. As you hear us say year after year up there – “that’s Martinsville.”

I can guarantee you that Denny and his crew chief, Mike Ford, have sat down to discuss that late-race pit call. If you listened to Denny’s post-race comments, it was clear with five laps to go when the race restarted that he knew he was beat. He truly believed they had just handed the win to Jeff Gordon on a silver platter .

Joe Gibbs Racing has to thank its lucky stars because everything had to fall and happen just right for Denny to pull that win off, and yet he did. I would wager if you made the same call at the same exact point in the next three Martinsville races, you will never get the stars to line up the way they did on Monday for that No. 11 team. It just won’t happen again. Again, you just aren’t supposed to beat the leader, Jeff Gordon, at Martinsville with five laps to go.

I also think we can’t lose sight of how great it was to have the spoiler back on the Sprint Cup cars. On the short track the spoiler really isn’t a factor. It did give the teams some experience with it before heading off to Phoenix in two weeks. As I said in our NASCAR on FOX pre-race show, those are much better cars now. To me, they look like stock cars are supposed to.