(Long Pond 6-6-10) Denny Hamlin has done it again at Pocono Raceway as the Chesterfield, VA driver picked up his second straight and fourth overall track victory Sunday in the Gillette Fusion ProGlide 500 Presented by Target.
Up until the final 30 laps Hamlin, who drives the FedEx Freight Toyota for Joe Gibbs Racing, was cruising to what looked like another stellar performance by the new master of the Tricky Triangle.
But then came a slew of late cautions that put quite a spike in the action as all types of dramatics played out during the waning laps.
After a restart on lap 170, Hamlin was 15th after a pit stop. Kurt Busch was the race leader with defending race winner Tony Stewart second and Busch’s Penske teammate Sam Hornish third. Hornish blew past both and into the leader under the first full green flag lap but soon after another yellow was waving for debris.
After several cars elected to pit Hamlin methodically advanced to fourth behind Hornish, Stewart and Juan Montoya.
Hamlin picked off Montoya on the restart and began honing in on Stewart and Hornish. Hornish was holding steady and seemed poised to take a career first win as he turned back several attempts by Stewart.
With 15 laps to go Hamlin powered inside of Stewart on the Long Pond straight and continued his momentum to zero in on Hornish. It was nose-to-tail racing and with a dozen circuits to go and Hamlin was once again working the inside groove, this time in turn three were he would take the lead for the fifth and final time. But this race was far from over.
With two laps to go and Hamlin maintaining a minimal distance over Stewart, the caution was out again for Joey Logano who got pinched out of fifth spot in turn three courtesy of Kevin Harvick.
Hamlin was sweating out his fuel mileage and was told by crew chief Mike Ford to get to the white flag as quickly as possible in order to secure his lead.
Due to the caution the race was forced into overtime and when the action resumed and the field tightly bunched, one of the wildest wrecks ever seen at Pocono took place on the back straight when Kasey Kahne got blocked by AJ Allmendinger and was forced off the track and into the grass.
His car then slide back onto the pavement and into the oncoming cars of Greg Biffle and Martin Truex, Jr., Kahne’s car got airborne and a number of other cars were collected in the melee. Despite the severity of the crash, no one was injured.
In the meantime Hamlin was able to stay the course and raced under the checkered and caution flags for his fourth victory of 2010 and 12th in 165 NASCAR Sprint Cup starts.
“It was a good run and we knew right from the get-go, that first run when we took the lead early that we had a good car. I felt that the track stayed pretty consistent. We just conserved for most of the day and I even wrote that on the dash because I knew we were going to use it up all I could at the end,” said Hamlin.
“It just don’t come easy were you run first place or third all day and then get the win at the end,” There’s always something at the end were a wrench kind of gets thrown in there at the end that messes up your whole plans. I know it was going to be important to save everything that I could until the very end so when I needed it I could.”
Crew chief Mike Ford offered his thoughts in a similar fashion
“Track position was key and I think the key for us winning the race was two restarts that Denny made when he gave up track position. We didn’t want to give up track position but you didn’t have a choice,” said Hamlin’s crew chief Mike Ford.
“This was an extremely long race for us. The first 100 laps went pretty eventless. As Denny was making laps we were trying to work on our car. You always seem to get the first half of the race here at Pocono run clean and then the second half gets pretty active and I was really concerned about that and it turned out to be that way and all strategies came into play.”
Kyle Busch passed Stewart after the final restart and made it a one-two finish for Gibbs Racing.
Point leader Harvick and Jimmie Johnson were fourth and fifth with Kurt Busch, Montoya, Clint Bowyer and Allmendinger rounding out the top ten.
The race was run in 3:44:30 at an average speed of 136.303 mph. The event was brought to a halt right just as the field was about to receive the initial green due to a rain storm which then delayed the event for almost two hours.
