Denny Hamlin holds of Brad Keselowski for Martinsville Sprint Cup win
Mar. 29, 2015
By Reid Spencer
NASCAR Wire Service
MARTINSVILLE,
Va.—With Brad Keselowski beating a tattoo into his rear bumper, and
with his No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota sliding sideways as it
approached the checkered flag, Denny Hamlin held on to his car and held
off Keselowski to win Sunday's NASCAR Sprint Cup Series STP 500 at
Martinsville Speedway.
In
winning his first race of the season, his fifth at the .526-mile short
track and the 25th of his career, Hamlin took the lead for good on Lap
473 of 500, passing teammate Matt Kenseth for the top spot. Two laps
later, Keselowski surged past Kenseth and tracked down Hamlin, setting
up a breathtaking battle in the closing laps.
Keselowski
could have won his second straight Sprint Cup race by wrecking Hamlin,
but the 2012 premier series champion opted not to win the race with his
bumper.
“Hats
off to Brad--he had an option, and he took the latter (not to wreck the
No. 11),” said Hamlin, who broke a 31-race Toyota winless streak dating
back to his victory at Talladega last May. “So thank him for that…
“We had some good short-track racing those last few laps.”
Keselowski tried everything in the closing laps short of knocking Hamlin’s car into the fence.
“I
did everything I could, other than wreck him,” said Keselowski, last
week’s winner at Auto Club Speedway in California. “I hit him pretty
good a couple of times. I don’t know what else I could have done other
than drive through him.”
Keselowski
took his last shot off the final corner, bumping Hamlin’s car and
turning it sideways. But Hamlin righted the car and drove to the finish
line .186 seconds ahead of the race runner-up.
Hamlin,
who recovered from a penalty for a runaway tire on Lap 166 and a
resulting trip to the rear of the field, said the victory followed the
longest competition meeting he’s experienced at Joe Gibbs Racing, one in
which team owner Joe Gibbs pointedly addressed his teams.
“Joe doesn’t raise his voice very often, but he did this time,” Hamlin said. “He told us to get off our tails and get to work.”
Obviously, the effort paid off on Sunday.
Coors
Light Polesitter Joey Logano ran third, overcoming a Lap 219 spin in
Turn 2 that started when Michael Annett’s Chevrolet got loose underneath
Logano’s Ford and knocked the No. 22 out of the racing groove.
Kenseth
came home fourth and David Ragan fifth in his continuing substitute
role for Kyle Busch, as Joe Gibbs Racing put three cars in the top five.
Martin Truex Jr. was sixth, posting his sixth straight top 10 to start
the season, and Danica Patrick finished seventh, one position shy of her
best result in the Sprint Cup series.
The
top 10 was Patrick’s fifth in NASCAR’s premier division, tying her with
Janet Guthrie for most in the series by a female driver. The driver of
the No. 10 Stewart-Haas Racing Chevrolet gained seven positions in the
standings to 16th.
“I'm
proud of everyone for not giving up and for keeping their head in the
game, and the pit crew did a good job,” said Patrick, who was a lap down
after 200 circuits but benefited from a free pass as the highest-scored
lapped car under a Lap 206 caution for Ricky Stenhouse Jr.’s brush with
the Turn 3 wall
“They
were frustrated last weekend after making a mistake on the last stop
(at Fontana), and it's a team effort, you know. I'm going to make
mistakes at the very end, too. I'm not going to lie, I was glad there
was not a yellow at the very end coming to the white. I was glad for
that.”
The
late-lap war between Hamlin and Keselowski was simply the finale to an
action-filled afternoon that produced 16 cautions for a total of 112
laps.
It
was the 16th caution that proved the undoing of eight-time Martinsville
winner Jeff Gordon, who grabbed the lead from Kenseth on Lap 442 and
appeared headed for victory in his final full-time season before NASCAR
threw the yellow flag for debris on the frontstretch on Lap 460.
Trying
to maintain his position at the front of the field, Gordon was flagged
for speeding on pit road as he approached his stall and restarted at the
rear of the field on Lap 467. To his credit, Gordon drove to a ninth
place before he ran out of laps.
Notes:
In his series debut, Chase Elliott was a victim of early contact, went
to the garage for repairs and completed 427 laps, finishing 38th…
Kevin
Harvick ran eighth and saw his streak of consecutive top-two finishes
end at eight. Harvick retained the series lead by 24 points over Logano,
with Truex holding third, 32 points back…
Hamlin’s
25th victory ties him with the late Joe Weatherly for most by a
Virginia native. Hamlin has accounted for all five of Toyota’s victories
at Martinsville.
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