South Florida Sun-Sentinel Palm Beach (Sunday)
Momentum in playoff on Hamlin’s side
At Martinsville, JGR driver looks to boost push for Cup
All the momentum is with Denny Hamlin headed to Martinsville Speedway for the opening race of the third round of NASCAR’s playoffs.
Hamlin, a five-time winner at the Virginia short track, need not look far for worthy challengers, including two of his Joe Gibbs Racing teammates.
JGR moved into the round of eight with three of its four drivers still racing for the Cup Series title and a reasonable shot at advancing the trio into the season finale shootout next month. Kyle Busch was the regular-season champion and holds a four-point lead over teammate Martin Truex Jr. in the standings before Sunday’s race. Truex leads the series with six wins, including two in the first round of the playoffs.
Hamlin is third in points and coming off his fifth win of the season, giving Gibbs and Toyota a tremendous 1-2-3 attack for the title. It’s only fitting the Gibbs group is in this position — the team has won 16 of the 32 races so far this season — but snagging three of the final four spots in the Homestead-Miami Speedway title-deciding race will be a tricky navigation inside the organization.
“Right now, we have very good chemistry,” Gibbs said after Hamlin won at Kansas Speedway last weekend. “It’s not going to buy us anything next week. I get so nervous. I was all excited about (Hamlin), then somebody mentioned next week, and I almost threw up. I said ‘You mean this doesn’t get us to Homestead?’ ”
No, the road to Homestead begins at the shortest track on the circuit, a tricky paper clip-shaped 0.526-mile oval. The middle round is at Texas Motor Speedway and then the championship field of four is decided at ISM Raceway outside Phoenix.
Busch, a four-time winner this season but mired in a stretch of 18 races without one, is ready for this nail-biting round. He has just two top-five finishes through the first six playoff races and is eager to get back up front.
“I feel like it’s our best round. We run well at all three of those places and we’ve won a few at Texas, we won Martinsville twice and Phoenix has been getting better for us, too,” Busch said. “We just need to continue to execute and do a good job and make sure that we mind our Ps and Qs.”
Truex has never won at Martinsville but his performance has picked up the last several years. He has finished eighth or better the last four races, was runner-up to Busch in 2017 and third last October.
“We know what we need to do,” Truex said. “Now it’s just a matter of going out and doing it. We have been fast, ran up front and led laps at all of these tracks in this round.”
A win at Martinsville gives any team breathing room to focus on the Nov. 17 finale and not worry about earning a slot in the final four. Joey Logano was a longshot to win the title last year but won at Martinsville, then upset regularseason heavyweights Busch, Truex and Kevin Harvick three weeks later to claim his first title.
Hamlin has won the pole for Sunday’s race at Martinsville, where the five-time winner will attempt to lock himself into NASCAR’s championship race.
Hamlin turned a lap at 97.840 mph in his Toyota on Saturday to earn the top spot. It’s the opening event of the round of eight and the field will be whittled over the next three races to the four drivers who will compete for the Cup.
Chase Elliott qualified second but will forfeit that position at the start of the race as punishment for an engine change. He will drop to the back of the field, but his strong qualifying effort still gave him a very good pit stall that should ease his Chevrolet’s battle from the back.
Truex qualified third and was followed by four Ford drivers, with Ryan Blaney at sixth the highest of the title contenders.
Kevin Harvick was lowest qualifier at 22nd.