Friday Richmond Notebook
Notebook Items:
· Despite knee injury, Denny Hamlin supremely confident entering Chase
· Bowyer happy just to have shot at Chase
· Gordon can’t relax on Saturday
Sept. 11, 2015
By Reid Spencer
NASCAR Wire Service
Despite knee injury, Denny Hamlin supremely confident entering Chase
RICHMOND,
Va. – How confident is Denny Hamlin that he’ll advance to the
Championship 4 Round of the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup at
Homestead-Miami Speedway?
So
much so that he hasn’t even contemplated the prospect of surgery to his
injured right knee, if he’s eliminated in one of the earlier rounds of
the Chase.
“Actually,
had not even thought about being eliminated—that’s how confident I am
right now that we’re not going to (be). If we do, I don’t know. You want
to finish the year strong and I think the way the points all work out
you still can move up to fifth or something like that.
“I think, either way, off-season is going to be the best option (for surgery) as long as I can make it that long.”
Hamlin
tore the ACL in his right knee playing basketball on Tuesday night.
It’s not the first time his ardent pursuit of hoops has interfered with
his NASCAR Sprint Cup Series career. In the spring of 2010, Hamlin tore
the ACL in his left knee and had surgery during an off week but didn’t
miss a race.
This
time it’s the right knee, which faces less stress with the gas pedal
than the left leg does with the brake. With the Chase looming, Hamlin
has chosen to postpone surgery and put up with the discomfort outside
the car. He showed up in the media center at Richmond International
Raceway on Friday as he prepared for Saturday's Federated Auto Parts 400
(7:30 p.m. ET on NBCSN), aided by a single crutch.
In
a league basketball game, Hamlin hit a driving layup at the end of
regulation play to send the contest into overtime. He tore the ACL in
the extra period. But the mishap hasn’t quelled his optimism about his
chances for a championship, a confidence that extends to the entire Joe
Gibbs Racing roster, which also includes Kyle Busch, Matt Kenseth and
last week’s Darlington winner, Carl Edwards.
“I
think our cars are obviously very good right now,” Hamlin said. “And,
yeah, there’s no reason why… we all said in January that our goal is to
have four cars at Homestead with a chance to win, and I don’t see —
except for bad luck — anything that can keep that from happening.”
BOWYER HAPPY JUST TO HAVE A SHOT AT CHASE
Three
months ago, Clint Bowyer probably would have considered earning a Chase
for the NASCAR Sprint Cup spot for lame duck Michael Waltrip Racing a
lost cause.
But
an uptick in performance by the No. 15 Toyota team, after a crew chief
swap began to bear fruit, has Bowyer poised to claim the last of 16
spots in NASCAR’s 10-race playoff.
Bowyer
has several routes to the Chase. If he wins Saturday night’s Federated
Auto Parts 400 at Richmond International Raceway, he’s in. Two of
Bowyer’s eight career victories have come at RIR.
If
of the 15 other drivers currently in Chase-eligible positions wins on
Saturday, Bowyer makes the Chase if he remains ahead of Aric Almirola in
the standings. Bowyer leads Almirola by 29 points entering the final
regular-season race, with each point equaling one position on the track.
Even
if a driver outside the top 16 happens to take the checkered flag,
Bowyer can still qualify for the playoff by moving ahead of one of the
drivers in front of him in the standings. Closest within reach are Paul
Menard (10 points ahead of Bowyer) and Jeff Gordon (18 points ahead).
“I’m
telling you, two months ago I didn’t see this even being a shot, and
they (the No. 15 team) really dug deep and worked hard. We switched crew
chiefs (before the June race at Michigan), we switched some key
components of the organization around and, boom, it took off and we
marched our way into the Chase talk.”
GORDON CAN’T AFFORD TO RELAX ON SATURDAY
When it comes to making the Chase, the odds are heavily in Jeff Gordon’s favor.
If
a driver in the top 16 wins on Saturday night, Gordon is locked into
the postseason. Even if a driver outside that Chase-eligible group takes
the checkered flag, Gordon can secure a Chase spot with a finish of
17th or better, 18th if he leads a lap and 19th if he leads most laps.
In
the latter case, however, a catastrophic mechanical failure or an early
wreck could knock the four-time champion out of the Chase in his final
season as a full-time driver. And Gordon knows it.
“Certainly,
there’s no comfort in where we’re at,” Gordon said Friday at Richmond.
“It’s so easy for things to go wrong, and you’re just trying to focus on
doing everything right.”
Gordon
is no stranger to pressure at Richmond, but in the 11 previous editions
of the Chase, he has qualified for the playoff 10 times, the lone
exception coming in 2005, when the field was limited to the top-10
drivers in the standings.
Nevertheless, he’s wary of drivers in the Federated Auto Parts 400 who can go for broke without consequence.
“I
would rather be in this position than like the ones on the outside
looking in, but the advantage that they have is that they have nothing
to lose and they can just go all out and not even worry about it,”
Gordon said.
“For
us, we can’t necessarily do that, and sometimes when you get
conservative, that’s when you get yourself in trouble. So we’re going to
try and balance that out, and I think we are very capable of doing
that.”
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