Denny Hamlin looked like he had just been in a heavyweight title fight – and lost. You don’t see that often in Hamlin. After a race, he usually looks like he could climb back in his car and terrify the competition for another 400 laps, 500 laps, whatever.
But not this time. Not after last week’s race at Iowa, where it was all he could do to make it through the 350 laps. Hamlin was beat. He looked every bit the 45-year-old driver he has become. He looked, well, human. He is not, in fact, Superman.
After it was over, and Hamlin had somehow clawed his way to a fifth place finish after being forced to start in the back of the pack, his team owner, Joe Gibbs, made an observation.
“I want to say this,” Gibbs said according to NASCAR’s website, nascar.com. “I’ve never seen Denny that exhausted. He got out of that car, and he was sitting there on pit wall, I think he was so nervous – we all were – about the brakes, and it just put a lot of pressure on him. I think he drove his heart out.”
All weekend, Hamlin had been involved in a brake controversy with NASCAR. JGR engineers and team analytics had come up with a plan, that, in theory, would help Hamlin’s car corner faster. It involved putting different kinds of brake pads on each wheel.
But, as is so often the case in NASCAR, what looked good on paper didn’t work on the track. The brake pads started coming apart which caused the brake rotors to fail which allowed air bubbles into the brake line which caused the brakes to lose pressure which meant racing with no brakes.
So Hamlin went to NASCAR. The brake pads need to be replaced, he said. The car is undrivable. No, NASCAR said. We don’t want teams using one set of brake pads for qualifying and another for the race.
“I told them I’d start the race on pit lane,” Hamlin said according to nascar.com. “I told them we have a major problem.” But NASCAR stood firm, and when Hamlin’s team made adjustments to the cooling system to try and help with the brakes, NASCAR sent Hamlin to the back of the field to start the race.
But this is not really a story about brakes. It’s a cautionary tale. Even with all of that, Hamlin managed to finish fifth. And Chase Briscoe, in another JGR Toyota that had similar brake problems, was sixth. And Ty Gibbs, in yet another JGR Toyota, won the race. And Christopher Bell in – you guessed it – another JGR Toyota, was second.
Which leads us to this question. If Ford and Chevy can’t even beat the Toyota’s when they’re running bad, how the hell are they going to beat them when they’re running good?
If you had a system that was designed to determine a true champion, No way. But NASCAR’s point system was never designed to determine a true champion. It was always designed to keep as many cars in contention for as long as possible.
And that carries over into this year’s new 10-race playoff, which at least ends the knockout system, where head-to-head racing eliminated the loser and which cost Hamlin the championship last year, to a system where the driver with the most points after the final 10 races wins the title.
But again, the regular season means virtually nothing because when the playoffs start, the points will be adjusted to bring all the contenders closer together to give all 16 cars more of a chance, and the NASCAR point system is a joke anyway because you don’t get points for competing, you get points for finishing, so anything can happen.
Still, using the Old Guy Sport competition index, which rewards racing, top five finishes and leading laps under green instead of just finishing races, three Toyotas, the two JGR cars driven by Hamlin (545 points) and Bell (367), plus the 23XI Toyota driven by Tyler Reddick (343), have clearly separated themselves from the rest.
And there are even more Toyotas in the next group, JGR’s Gibbs (295 points) and Briscoe (252) separated by Hendrick’s Kyle Larson (270). So, the question becomes not if a Toyota will win, but WHICH Toyota will win. And if one of them doesn’t, it’s another black eye for NASCAR.
NASCAR NOTES
Three most likely winners at Richmond: 1-Christopher Bell, 2-Denny Hamlin, 3-Ryan Blaney. Last year’s winner at Richmond: Austin Dillon. Top five at Richmond last year: 1-Dillon, 2-Alex Bowman, 3-Blaney, 4-Joey Logano, 5-Austin Cindric.
Last week’s OGS Iowa picks: 1-Ty Gibbs, 2-Hamlin, 3-Kyle Larson. Iowa winner: Gibbs. OGS season record after 19 races (OGS does not count the superspeedway races at Daytona, Talladega and Atlanta) 10-9.
OGS competition index top 10 after 19 races: 1-Hamlin 545 points, 2-Bell 367, 3-Tyler Reddick 343, 4-Gibbs 295, 5-Larson 270, 6-Chase Briscoe 252, 7-Shane van Gisbergen 223, 8-Blaney 203, 9-Chase Elliott 182, 10-Logano 147.
OGS competition index top 10 on short tracks (tracks most similar to Richmond): 1-Gibbs 169, 2-Blaney 158, 3-Hamlin 126, 4-Logano 116, 5-Bell 115, 6-Larson 83, 7-Elliott 62, 8-Briscoe 41, 9-Reddick 20, 10-van Gisbergen 15.
