This Year’s Hamlin Not The Driver Who Missed In 2010

This Year’s Hamlin Not The Driver Who Missed In 2010

Denny Hamlin’s near miss in 2010 – a championship lost in the final race – can be summed up in two words: wasted opportunity. A season-leading eight victories. Wasted. Catching and passing the then four-time NASCAR Sprint Cup champion with two races remaining: Wasted.
Hamlin’s demeanor, after thrashing the competition into submission Sunday at New Hampshire, suggests the outcome could be different if this year’s Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup™ is a rerun of 2010.
Hamlin isn’t five-time NASCAR Sprint Cup champion Jimmie Johnson’s closest rival. Not yet. He goes to Dover’s AAA 400 third in the standings – seven points behind Johnson and a deficit of six to Brad Keselowski.
But Sunday’s performance, a 32nd-place start to the lead in less than a third of the race on a 1.058-mile flat track deemed among the most difficult on which to pass en route to this season’s fifth victory, has the feel of another Hamlin-Johnson shootout. Johnson finished second.
In 2010, Hamlin and the No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota backed up their No. 1 seeding with a second-place finish in New Hampshire. He held the points lead with a ninth at Dover – his second-most troublesome track – where Johnson won. Hamlin slipped to second in the standings with a 12th-place finish in Kansas but continued to shadow Johnson, aided by a win at Martinsville among four top-10 finishes. A second Chase win in Texas – in which the No. 11 car’s crew out-performed Johnson and Chad Knaus both on track and pit road – gave Hamlin a 33-point lead.
Misplayed strategy at Phoenix and an early accident at Homestead left Hamlin believing the title had been given away rather than taken by Johnson. That malaise appeared to carry over into last season, in which Hamlin won just once and finish ninth in points.
How Hamlin handles Sunday’s AAA 400 will determine – in the short term anyway – whether a Johnson-Hamlin duel is fact or illusion. Hamlin’s Dover performance leaves much to be desired: a pair of fourths his best finishes, 15th-best Driver Rating (78.6), 18th-best Average Running Position (18.3) and an average finish of 20.5 in 13 starts.
Hamlin finished 18th at the "Monster Mile" in June as Johnson notched his ninth Dover victory.