Denny Hamlin raced his guts out, his team prepared an amazing car. He led four times the number of laps as other drivers in the field Sunday at Phoenix Raceway but, once again, missed out on his first championship. He secured the pole position and he led the race for 208 of its 319 laps. Kyle Larson won the championship.
Hamlin was the races most dominant driver and was leading when a four-tire pit stop after a caution caused by a blown tire on William Byron’s car changed everything. Kyle Larson on two tires finished ahead of him and he did not come home a champion.
After the race, Hamlin pulled his helmet off, handed it to a team member and sat in his car for roughly five minutes, after the race was over staring, expressionless, toward the track as if frozen in time.
It was painful to see.
My question to the race fans was and is - if they had not been a fan of Hamlin’s before, were they still heartbroken for Denny - who wanted to win the championship for his family, team and most of all his ailing father.
Here are some of the comments I got on X
A few of the responses were some fans who said “no” this didn’t change their opinion of Hamlin who likes to have fun with the fans and make them boo him.
But primarily fans were in support and felt his pain.
“He’s a champion either way,” Denny Hamlin’s crew chief Chris Gayle said. “He put in the work. He dominated the race. He sat on the pole. He did everything he needed to be a champion today. It didn’t work out for him on the last re-start but that’s the truth.”
Additional comments here below.
