Denny Hamlin finished eighth in the NASCAR Cup Series race at Kansas Speedway but felt like he was capable of so much more.
Instead of creating a significant margin of error in the second round of the playoffs headed to Talladega and a new look Charlotte Roval, Hamlin has just an 11-point advantage over the cutline, and it’s primarily because of the number of spots the Joe Gibbs Racing No. 11 pit crew gave up on pit road.
Hamlin was running inside the top-5 during his first stop during the first stage and left pit road after the pit stop. He vented over the radio that they couldn’t afford losing track position like this. A second stop near the end of the second stage resulted in a loose wheel and a second pit stop that forced him to restart at the tail of the lead lap.
That cost them valuable stage points.
He rallied again to reach the top-five at the time of the final caution for Kyle Busch spinning from the lead and came off pit road 16th.
“We should have won the race,” Hamlin said. “We had the fastest car, but every time we get to the top three the caution comes out and we restart 15th to 20th. Can’t show how fast your car is when you’re back of the pack. All you can do is just keep making positions back up to the front over and over and over and eventually you just run out of laps and someone else wins.”
He didn’t mince words about the crew that goes over the wall either, even in saying he would keep most of his thoughts between he and crew chief Chris Gabehart.
“They know that today was one of their worst days ever,” Hamlin said. “They’ll just go work to clean it up.”
Hamlin even suggested that it’s affecting his resolve, at least in this moment too.
“I’m not in it mentally,” Hamlin told FOX Sports and The Athletic on pit road. “I can tell you that. There’s a lot of wires crossed and bolts loose at the moment. What can you do? I’ll do the best I can do to drive the car and do my part.”
Speaking to NASCAR.com, Gabehart said there was one persistent area of concern on pit stops and chalked it up to an ‘off day’ like any other sport.
“We were strong enough to get buried once,” Gabehart told NASCAR’s official website. “We were easily going to compete for a win even if we only got buried once. Just couldn’t keep getting buried.
“Most teams here would probably be fairly happy with the day we had. I mean, I think we may have moved up one spot and picked up a few points on the cutline but certainly at Kansas, the 11 expects more out of themselves than that, especially when we had kind of one glaring issue. The car was certainly capable of winning and so is Denny but it’s a team sport. It takes it all and we just didn’t have it all today.”
Gabehart also expressed confidence in his pit crew, conceding that this easy, and that it was just a bad day for them in that area.
Matt Weaver is a Motorsports Insider for Sportsnaut. Follow him on Twitter
