Everyone deals with disappointment differently. That’s clear in the reactions of those drivers who dealt with it last November.
Denny Hamlin, Kevin Harvick and Clint Bowyer each faced their own NASCAR Sprint Cup setback in 2010. How will each react this season?
At the season-ending awards ceremony last December, Hamlin clearly was smarting from the championship slipping away the month before. He entered the season finale with a slim points lead over perennial champion Jimmie Johnson, but a spin early in the race damaged his car and ended his championship aspirations.
Hamlin’s demeanor and difficulty in moving past that was noted by his rivals. And while he told reporters gathered in Daytona for testing last week that he has not “even thought about racing in the last month,” some might wonder just how much last year’s turn of events haunts him.
If anyone can relate to Hamlin’s position, it would be Harvick. He also was one to watch last year, having led the points for most of the first 26 races before his lead disappeared when the standings for the Chase for the Sprint Cup were reset. But he remained in contention for the title to the end, finishing a career-best third behind Johnson and Hamlin.
Harvick says he put that behind him rather quickly.
“I mean, it’s just racing,” he told reporters Tuesday during the NASCAR Media Tour at Richard Childress Racing. “You go about it and you go and you put all that stuff behind you.”
However, he says, even before that final race, there were signs of how much pressure Hamlin was feeling when he joined Harvick and Johnson in the prerace news conference featuring the title contenders.
“Those emotions that you carry and the nervousness that you carry are somewhat obvious in the way that he handled himself going into that press conference, and (he) wound up making a mistake,” Harvick said of Hamlin, referring to the contact that spun him out in the race and ultimately cost him the championship.
Harvick points out that every driver needs to put the 2010 season behind him if he is to stand any chance in 2011.
“This sport continuously runs. Whether you’re devastated or not, you better have your mind right when you start because this sport will eat you up and spit you out pretty fast if you don’t,” he said. “You have to have a pretty stern opinion (that) what happened last year needs to be last year.”
Harvick says he works to put things behind him quickly. In fact, he has a formula for it.
“I have a rule,” he said. “When I get in the airplane, for the first half of the trip — if it’s an hour or if it’s five hours — you get the first half of the trip to pout. ... When they get to the second half of the trip — and they all know it on the plane now, too — you better start eating your food and worrying about what’s happening next week.
“Because when you get home, you better have your mind on what you’ve got to do next week and the race track that you’re going to, because at 8 a.m. Monday morning, I have to sit in this building and talk about what we would have done different the week before. But most of it’s about what we’re going to do next week, so you’ve got to be full steam ahead.”
His teammate Bowyer knows a little bit about disappointment. After winning the opening Chase race at New Hampshire last year, his car was found to be outside NASCAR regulations and he was penalized 150 points and lost his crew and car chief for several races as part of the penalty. He did rebound with a win at Talladega six races later and finished 10th in the standings.
But is he over the disappointment?
“You’re never over it; it’s something that sucks,” Bowyer said. “But as far as the sport, it is what it is and you’ve got to go on. One thing that ended it for me was (winning the fall race at) Talladega … It was an important win, it was something that put (the earlier penalty) behind me.”
