By Caleb Whisler, Staff Writer
It was a strategy call from atop the pit box in the Folds of Honor QuikTrip 500 at Atlanta Motor Speedway that brought Denny Hamlin to a fourth-place finish.
While everyone came down pit road to take four tires and fuel, crew chief, Mike Wheeler, left Hamlin out to pit off sequence. While other drivers had to make three more stops at the end, Hamlin only had to make two more stops. Wheeler employed the same strategy at the Southern 500 in 2017.
Hamlin had an inkling that Wheeler was up to something.
“No, I wasn’t surprised. I had an idea. Any time — as soon as I left pit road he said I was going to have to go 50 laps the first time, so I immediately knew he was going to break it up into two stops instead of three. I wasn’t surprised at all about it,” Hamlin stated.
As the strategy was playing out, Hamlin was starting to get worried. With the abrasiveness of the track surface at Atlanta, Hamlin was looking at the lap times, but was relieved to see how things were cycling out.
Worried about it, a little bit in the second stint because I wasn’t running really fast lap times on new tires,” Hamlin stated.
“I think 32 flat or something like that. Other guys were able to run some 70s and 80s, and it seemed like we got to the lap time of like 33 whatever pretty quick, and I was just worried that the strategy, you need the lap times to be pretty linear for that strategy to work, and we kind of leveled off a little bit, and some of the field leveled off. I was worried a little bit, but I kept seeing it cycle around to where I was in a good position.”
With his fourth place finish at Atlanta, Hamlin sits third in the points standings, 12 points behind point leader Joey Logano.