For Denny Hamlin, a week off was precisely what he and the team needed to recharge their batteries.
When Hamlin returned to work Saturday, he posted the pole-winning lap at Atlanta Motor Speedway with a speed of 187.38 mph. It was Hamlin’s first pole of the season, his first pole at AMS and his eighth career pole in Sprint Cup.
“I think in the off-week everyone had time to breathe,” Hamlin said. “We just got so caught up in the last Michigan race. We looked at the schedule and said, ‘Wow, we can win at Bristol, there’s another Pocono, there’s another Michigan.’ All these racetracks we started naming, it was like we could win every single one of these races. We could have 10 wins when the Chase starts.
“We’re going to spend these next two weeks treating these as if they are Chase racing. We found ourselves going for wins so much and going all out trying to get more wins that it probably hurt us in the long run. These next two weeks we’re going to points race just as if it’s Loudon, New Hampshire.”
While Hamlin has two races to regroup before the Chase, Atlanta hasn’t been the best track for him. In 10 starts on the 1.5-miler, Hamlin’s best finish is sixth. He has led just 130 laps at Atlanta.
Next weekend, when the tour rolls into Richmond, Hamlin will be the hometown favorite. Hamlin is the defending race winner and has led 899 laps in nine career Cup starts.
Hamlin was considered an early front-runner for the 2010 title. He scored five wins in 10 races between Martinsville (March 28) and Michigan (June 13) and is tied with series champion Jimmie Johnson for most wins on the tour. But the past nine races, where Hamlin has posted an average finish of 19.2, revealed weaknesses in the program.
Hamlin knows the time is now to turn his team around.
“I feel like the last 10 races have definitely been up and down for our team,” Hamlin said. “We went on such a hot streak there and got spoiled a little bit, I guess you could say -- deemed probably the regular season irrelevant from that point on because we knew we were going to get in the Chase. And then when something goes bad, you have a good run and it looks like you’re going to win or run really well in the top five and you have a mechanical failure, it just beats the guys down so bad. It really is discouraging.
“Even though coming off a mechanical failure at Bristol, I think it’s just that week that gave everyone a chance to reset, and it gave everyone a chance to take a break and realize we have two weeks. Our Chase starts now. It’s two weeks to get momentum going. It seems like as soon as I’ll show up to the racetrack, everything has gone smooth.”
TRIED AND TRUE
Rick Hendrick says Lance McGrew will continue in his post as Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s crew chief throughout the remainder of the season.
"Right now, we've got a game plan, and we're sticking to it,” Hendrick said. “Next week and going into the Chase and during the Chase, our plans are for those two guys to be together."
Hendrick said he was “pretty happy with the chemistry” between Earnhardt and McGrew despite the team's sitting 18th in the point standings and scoring just two top-fives (both at Daytona) this season.
When asked about the crew chief situation following qualifying, Earnhardt appeared to share Hendrick’s sentiments.
“I think me and Lance get along pretty good,” Earnhardt said. “The chemistry is pretty good between us, but we need to start producing some speed pretty quickly. We've got just a few races left to really give ourselves an argument. So, we're going to work real hard.
“We’ve been testing (at Gresham Motorsports Park) and trying to put together a good package for Richmond and try to learn what we can. We’ll see what happens tomorrow. We’ve been working on the car. We don’t have Denny Hamlin speed, but we’ve been running the same lap times as our teammates.”
Earnhardt, who won the 2004 spring race at Atlanta, qualified 25th for Sunday’s race. Earnhardt said he “didn’t have as much speed as the last time” they raced at Atlanta, but the team didn't have enough time to “change the car into qualifying setup to sit on the pole.“
While names such as Kenny Francis and Alan Gustafson have been mentioned as possible replacements for McGrew, Earnhardt didn’t feel it was the appropriate time.
“It's not something we need to be discussing at this point,” Earnhardt said. “I don't run the company. It's not my position to (make) these changes. I'd rather stay out of that. It's never a fun situation. I like working with Lance, and it's working pretty good."
NUMBERS GAME
Earnhardt Childress Racing topped the annual NASCAR dyno contest. After the sanctioning body confiscated 16 engines after Michigan to run at the NASCAR R&D center, the Nos. 29 and 1 Chevrolets topped dynamometer charts.
SAY WHAT?
After Jamie McMurray won his first Nationwide race since 2004 behind the wheel of the JR Motorsports No. 88 Chevrolet, he expressed his disappointment that his wife, Christy, wasn’t in Atlanta to share the moment. “Pops (crew chief Tony Eury) is cute, but he’s not that cute.”
The McMurrays, who returned to the States after a week in Italy, are expecting their first child in December.
