NASCAR: Denny Hamlin Back to Winner's Circle In Phoenix

Racin’ with Russ

After struggling for most of 2011 with marginal results, Denny Hamlin bounced back on Sunday afternoon to capture the NASCAR Sprint Cup race in Phoenix with a hard charging Kevin Harvick just a car length back before running out of gas with one to go.

The race began with veteran racer Mark Martin claiming his 52nd career pole position. He led the opening lap, but quickly gave it up to Tony Stewart, who led nine laps before Harvick took the point and often.

Jimmie Johnson led a bunch of laps, as did Kyle Busch, along with a rapid Martin Truex Jr. Toward the later stages of the event, Harvick worked hard to pass Busch before eventually giving up the point during one of the final pit stops.

Gas concerns, or the lack thereof, certainly came into play before this race was over. Hamlin, Harvick and Marcos Ambrose all rolled the dice in this department with two coming up short. With Harvick making up a sizable deficit to leader Hamlin, he ran out while in hot pursuit. Ambrose came up short, but may have suffered an engine issue with little more than a dozen to go.

The official margin of victory was well over seven seconds, but only because of the gas issue—the white flag lap showed only a car length apart. Capping off the top five were the cars of Greg Biffle, Johnson and Keselowski.

Others with gas issues or incidents on the day included Tony Stewart having a car that wouldn’t re-fire, winding up two laps down in 22nd. His teammate Ryan Newman got together with Carl Edwards in a slight on-track altercation, leaving Newman backed into the wall and a 21st place finish.

Edwards improved throughout the day, running among the top 10 in the closing stages, only to run out of gas and finish 17th.

Hamlin’s 18th career win vaults him into the points lead with Greg Biffle second and Harvick sitting in third.

Nationwide

Denny Hamlin won the pole for the Nationwide race on Saturday and led a lot of laps, as did Kevin Harvick. But despite the two teaming up to lead the most laps, Nationwide full-timer Elliott Sadler managed to get up on the wheel for the final two dozen laps and grab his first Nationwide trophy in nearly 14 years!

Others in the top five included Brad Keselowski, Ricky Stenhouse Jr, Austin Dillon and Harvick.
Sadler’s win elevates him to the top of the charts in points, just 10 points over rookie Dillon and 17 ahead of Trevor Bayne.

Danica Patrick’s second Nat run of the year netted a 21st place finish, some three laps down from the leader. Immediately after the race, she stomped off to her trailer, refusing post-race interviews.

From Rumorville

Those fines and penalties in regards to Jimmie Johnson’s Sprint Cup car failing pre-race inspection with illegal “C” pillars at Daytona were announced last week. Crew chief and car chief were both set down for six weeks, in addition to a $100,000 fine for Chad Knaus. Throw in a 25 point penalty to driver Johnson and owner Jeff Gordon and the overall picture was rather severe.

My problem with the situation is that the car never made it onto the racetrack, yet the penalties were harsh. Sometimes, NASCAR allows teams to massage on the body panels to get them into spec and other times not. Team Hendrick has appealed NASCAR’s ruling, so I’d expect a decision in the next few weeks, but I don’t see any kind of reversal.

Roger Penske’s NASCAR program made a big announcement this past week to proclaim their switch to Ford power for 2013 and beyond. Seeing that their Dodge powered cars have been performing well enough to have both been in the Chase makes this a little surprising, but with the only other Dodge in the field, that being Robby Gordon, there’s ‘slim pickins’ to bounce information off of. I think this was only a natural decision to make and may leave Dodge on the outside looking in down the road.

That’s it for this week. Next week, RWR will review the NASCAR results from Las Vegas along with more racing news from around the globe.

concluded Ward