Hamlin: We can beat Jimmie Johnson (Yahoo! Sports)
November 7, 2009
FORT WORTH, Texas – They’ve been saying it for a hundred years in Chicago.
Wait ‘til next year.
And now they’re saying it at race tracks across the country, with Jimmie Johnson having turned the vast majority of NASCAR Nation into one big travelling Wrigleyville.
On the bright side, Cub fans now have company. But safety in numbers is hardly a consolation prize for those hoping for, at the very least, a nail-biting finish to this year’s Chase.
The road to Johnson’s fourth straight championship will be the least congested yet. He will, in all likelihood, clinch the title next weekend in Phoenix – marking the first time in its six-year history the Chase will be decided before the season finale. And when he does, those not rooting for the No. 48 (which is exponentially more than are) will be left to say to themselves, “Wait ‘til next year.”
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It’s a pathetic mantra, really, based on nothing substantial, unless you consider hope substantial, which of course you do if you’re a Cub fan or, now, a card-carrying member of the anti-48 crowd. Still, when turning a page on a calendar is the basis of that hope, you are, essentially, hopeless.
Which brings us to Denny Hamlin.
Prior to this year’s Chase, Hamlin declared himself the favorite. His basis wasn’t hope or even hubris, but rather a knowledge that, at his best, he could hang with Johnson – anywhere, anytime.
“You gotta have confidence, and if you don’t have confidence, then you’re racing for second,” Hamlin said back in September. “I gotta feel like every time I get in the car we’re championship caliber, and right now we do believe that.”
Where does the confidence come from?
Though Hamlin hasn’t been touted as the potential heir to Johnson’s throne the way teammate Kyle Busch has, the results say overwhelmingly that Hamlin, not Busch, is Joe Gibbs Racing’s best championship contender right now. Since Hamlin’s arrival on the Cup scene in 2006, no JGR driver – not even Tony Stewart – has produced better results in the Chase, a fact Hamlin is quite aware of.
“Kyle was considered the star driver of our team before he ever got here, but we just let our on-track stuff [speak for us],” said Hamlin, now in his fourth Cup season. “People can say we’re the middle team, the back team or the front team … but since I’ve been with Joe Gibbs Racing I’ve only been beaten by a teammate in the points one time.”
Leading up to the Chase, the focus again was squarely on Busch. Would he, with his four wins, even make the postseason?
Meanwhile, no one was running better than Hamlin. In the dozen races prior to the Chase, he had 10 top 10s, including a pair of wins. And he was competitive everywhere – short tracks, restrictor-plate tracks and, most importantly, the 1.5-milers that dominate the Chase schedule.
Never mind Kyle Busch, to beat Johnson you have to be good on the mile-and-a-half tracks, and Hamlin was. He finished fifth at Chicagoland, sixth at Atlanta and 10th at Michigan.
This was the basis of his pre-Chase declaration, the reason he believed he could dethrone Johnson. But as it turned out, his biggest challenge wouldn’t be the three-time defending champion; it would be himself.
A mental lapse in California in Chase Race No. 4 led to his first DNF. Two engine failures led to two more DNFs, and poof, Hamlin’s title hopes went up in smoke.
Hamlin suffered a blown engine at Talladega, his second engine failure in the Chase.Getty
What’s frustrating from Hamlin’s standpoint is that he’d led laps in all three of those races and was actually leading two of them when disaster struck.
Though he now sits 11th in the 12-driver Chase, Hamlin is undeterred about his original assessment that he can be the one to knock Johnson off his throne.
“We can. We can,” he said Friday at Texas Motor Speedway, site of race No. 8 in the Chase. “For sure our team can do it.
Hamlin knows he let this one get away. That’s not to say he’d be ahead of Johnson right now if he hadn’t suffered those three DNFs. Hamlin still has to figure out Dover – a Chase track where he’s never been very good.
But he knows he shouldn’t be 448 points back. He knows he shouldn’t be trailing nine of the drivers ahead of him in the standings. He knows he should be putting pressure on Johnson.
“In years past it’s been, oh we’ve been out-performed by those guys each and every week of the Chase,” Hamlin said. “This year I don’t think that’s the case.”
Hamlin says he is more optimistic about next season than he is sorry for himself this season, that his commitment has never been greater, and that he’s already looking forward to arriving at Daytona in February.
“Every year I’ve been in the Cup Series he’s been the champion,” Hamlin said of Johnson. “It’s time for a change.”
Of course, for that he and the rest of NASCAR Nation will have to wait ‘til next year, at least.
Jay Hart is the NASCAR editor for Yahoo! Sports. Send Jay a question or comment for potential use in a future column or webcast.
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