Hamlin’s perfect Daytona strategy left him unrewarded
- Kevin Doldersum
- Feb 20
- 4 min read
Speed, bravery, and focus. Those mark the elements that make up winners on Super Speedways in NASCAR. The NASCAR Cup Series’ first points awarding race at the Daytona International Speedway once more proved to be a spectacle with rewarding strategies, risky overtakes, and lots of incidents. The 500-mile-long (805km) race was ultimately won by William Byron, claiming his second victory in a row at the event. The fact that Byron only led 10 of 200 laps truly puts into perspective how this race can be turned upside down within a split second. And a topsy-turvy race it was for NASCAR legend Denny Hamlin, who had a masterclass of a race with no reward.
NASCAR Cup Series
The American racing-class NASCAR Cup Series brings quite the joy for those who love close side-by-side action at immense speed. The Daytona 500 for example clocked over 129mph (206kph) on average speed last weekend. NASCAR, however, is quite a strange competition when comparing it to other motorsports. The first odd thing is races being split up into three stages; the first two stages grant points to the top 10 and the third stage marks the finish of the race, granting points to the top 40 cars. These points do not mean much towards a championship strangely enough, as the season takes on a playoff format towards the end of the year, granting playoff positions to all race-winners up until that point and the driver scoring most points in the ‘regular season’. During these playoff races, all drivers that did not make the playoffs still compete in the remaining races. Every round, drivers will be eliminated from the playoffs based on points and race wins. So, NASCAR builds their competition with a “you win, you’re in” mentality rather than crowning the most points scoring driver as champion. Ultimately, come the championship decider only four drivers have a chance of clinching the title which is achieved by finishing highest among those four drivers.
Hamlin’s Daytona 500
Call it the Monaco Grand-Prix for NASCAR, the 500 is perceived as the most prestigious race on the American stock car racing series’ calendar. Having won it three times in the past, including the closest ever finish in the race’s history in 2016, NASCAR icon Denny Hamlin was looking to make it four this year and got incredibly close to doing so. Starting the race in eighth position, the 39-year-old Joe Gibbs Racing driver saw the team tactics slowly work in his favor towards the end of the race. Though Hamlin dropped all the way to the back of the field on lap 63 in an incident where the 54-time race winner displayed extremely refined car control evading a possible end to his race, he still managed to bring his car back into the fight up front primarily due to quick pitstops by his crew under full course yellow (safety cars).
Hamlin slipped back up into fourth place with fifteen laps to go, following a crash initiated by Ricky Stenhouse Jr. taking out multiple favorites for the win in the likes of Ryan Blaney, Joey Logano, and Kyle Busch. Taking the lead on lap 193, Hamlin looked on for a fourth win at the venue. Only two laps later, a massive crash saw Preece roll over after Bell lost control of his Joe Gibbs Racing machine. This incident would lead to a red flag, and an overtime finish. Overtime is a NASCAR specific phenomenon as they do not let races finish under safety car conditions, so overtime finishes add two laps of racing after late incidents are cleared off the track again. If a crash happens on the first of those two laps, overtime is extended once more until a maximum of ten extra laps is reached. Hamlin, being in the lead at the time of the late incident, would restart the race as leader. The man from Florida saw one lap pass without a full course yellow, leaving him just one lap short of winning his 55th NASCAR race.
Bitter pill to take
Joe Gibbs Racing driver Chase Briscoe, teammate of Hamlin, came forth into third place catching a massive slipstream from Hamlin’s no. 11 car. What happened next is described by Briscoe himself as such: "I was like, ‘I’m going to push Denny to the win. JGR is going to win with my first race here.' When I hit him, we all came together -- I haven’t seen it yet -- and somehow I was able to keep it straight, and obviously move forward." A second heart in mouth moment for Hamlin, and this time he would not come out unharmed. The man who was running second as the incident unfolded, Austin Cindric, describes the following "Denny wanted to take his run right away and I still got a good shot from the 01 [Lajoie]. Whoever was pushing Denny clearly wrecked him. There was just a ton of momentum, with the field getting broken up.”
Hamlin’s lucky stars were used up as he got around to the final lap. A fourth victory at the Daytona 500 just was not meant to be for the driver that won most NASCAR races without ever being crowned champion. Hamlin, disappointed with the result, reflected on X later that night summing up the Daytona 500 he experienced rather well: “That sucked”.
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