LONG POND, Pa. – Denny Hamlin has mastered Pocono Raceway. Ever since he swept both races at the “Tricky Triangle” in 2006 as a rookie, he’s set the standard at the 2.5-mile track.
Hamlin was a threat once again during Sunday’s The Great American Getaway 400. He entered the race fourth in the regular season championship standings, 42 points below Kyle Larson. His crew chief Chris Gabehart knows how valuable those 15 coveted Playoff points can be and called the No. 11 car’s aggressively.
In both stages, Gabehart gave the No. 11 car track position, opting for stage points. Hamlin finished second to his Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Martin Truex Jr. during the opening stage, but lost track position to begin the second stage.
When Ross Chastain brought out the caution on Lap 54, Gabehart called for a two-tire stop on the No. 11 car, giving Hamlin the best track position of those that pitted. With Ty Gibbs, Josh Berry and Austin Cindric needing to pit before the stage was complete, Hamlin had a sizable lead over Chase Elliott, scoring the stage victory by some five seconds.
“Really hard when you’re fast enough to win stages or get a lot of points doing it,” Gabehart said of the challenges of being a crew chief at Pocono. “You’re in a regular season championship point battle and you’re not willing to give up the ghost on that because there are a lot of playoff points on the line for the regular season championship but you’re also trying to win the race. It’s just hard at this track to check every one of those boxes.”
While Hamlin scored the Playoff point, Chris Buescher, Ryan Blaney and Truex flipped the stage to have track position for the final stage. Blaney was the best of the trio and kept his track position while having to make one final pit stop during Stage 3.
A rash of four cautions, including a pair of multi-car incidents, hindered Hamlin from making passes on restarts as he had to defend his position. On the final restart with 23 laps remaining, the No. 11 car slotted in third, behind Blaney and Alex Bowman.
Hamlin passed Bowman with less than 10 laps remaining, but he was more than two seconds behind Blaney. When the checkered flag flew, he was 1.3 seconds back, earning his first top-five finish since World Wide Technology Raceway in early June.
“Just doing all I could to optimize lap time and try to reel [Blaney] in,” Hamlin said of his late rally. “I think [Blaney] had good enough pace to keep us at bay. The track position was so huge at the end. I got stuck behind [Bowman] for a while and I just didn’t have it like I needed it to get around in traffic.”
Hamlin scored a race-high 54 points, seven points more than William Byron, who tallied the second-most points on the day. Chase Elliott became the new regular season championship leader, though Hamlin chopped 22 points from his deficit and the top four drivers are within 20 points of one another.
“Good points day, but I just care about wins,” Hamlin said.” I’m trying to get as many wins as I can, so I always tell [Gabehart] to call the race to win it. He tried, and the race didn’t work out in our favor.”
In a race that’s hard to earn points at because it’s filled with different strategies, Gabehart knew scoring 54 points was an accomplishment for the day.
“At Pocono, if you rank the order of most points ever scored, this is going to rank right up there because it’s so hard to check all of the boxes,” Gabehart said. “Today, we came up one spot short.”
It turns out that it’s the third-most points scored at Pocono during the stage era. Martin Truex Jr. earned 57 points in a 2018 victory and the No. 11 team earned 55 points last year in what was Hamlin’s record seventh Pocono triumph.