Denny Hamlinrecognizes his pit crew played a gigantic role in his victory at Dover Motor Speedway over the weekend.
However, Hamlin certainly had his fingerprints all over the win as well, as he navigated the three-wide race off pit road betweenKyle Larson, Alex Bowman and himself to perfection, allowing him to come out with the lead, and never looking back.
During the latest episode of his Actions Detrimental podcast, the No. 11 wheelman broke down what happened during that key moment in the race.
“All I try to do is get to my lights as quick as I can, to my max speed, and then hold it,” Hamlin started. “Same as what he did. But he established you know, since Kyle was on on the back side of pit road, he established his speed very, very early. So at that point, he’s just hoping cars don’t, you know, slow down and pull in their pit stall, or maybe they’re coming out and that could potentially bottle up pit road as people were coming out. Some are coming in, like what we had there. So that’s the only risk you run, when you pit way back there, versus when you pit up more towards the front, where we were at. And it’s just a weird track, where you have guys that are on the tail end of the lead lap, coming in as you’re leaving.
“So if you’re up towards the front, it’s always kind of a merge spot there, probably around 16th to 18th place, whoever’s in that spot. You’re trying to come in, right? It’s such a hard spot to be in, because you just want to get into your pit stall, but you’ve got all these other cars leaving, and it’s like, ‘Well, who’s going to yield?’ And, you know, my approach or thought process is, that usually the person that’s up towards the front gets the right away. They’re the ones that shouldn’t have to lift. But it’s every, for every driver, it’s a little different.”
Alas, Hamlin did relent that the narrowness of Dover’s pit road makes it a difficult one for drivers, but he was still able to get the job done.
“Oh, for sure. Because that pit lane is so narrow. I mean, as you saw, we were three-wide, but only for a second, because it was, it’s like if someone came out next to me, it was — it was not going to work,” Hamlin added. “We were just all going to collide. So it’s just a, it’s a very, very narrow pit road.”
In the end, Denny Hamlin captured his third win of the season, in large part because of what happened on pit road. The No. 11 will look for more success as the Cup Series moves to Kansas this weekend.
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