Two races have taken place in the first round of the playoffs, and things have been terrible so far for Joe Gibbs Racing’s Denny Hamlin. While chaos was anticipated at Watkins Glen International, Hamlin would not have hoped for such a dreadful outing, which eventually led him to finish the race in P23, landing a negative six in the playoff standings cutoff.
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The #11 Toyota Camry XSE driver was involved in a wreck at the bus stop chicane during the first lap of the race. Despite sustaining some damage, he limped back to the pits, before eventually heading back out. Subsequently, he was spun around by fellow playoff competitor Brad Keselowski after Hamlin took the runoff and tried to go three wide entering the bottom of the esses.
Following the race, the JGR driver spoke with the media and said, “It’s just a couple of races where things out of your control just didn’t go well… The first lap, I mean certainly I gotta take responsibility for what I did on Saturday which is not qualifying well. So that’s on me and certainly that put us right in the middle of where wrecks usually happen and we got shoved into it.”
Denny Hamlin shares his thoughts after Watkins Glen pic.twitter.com/tmZMjfHTaI
— Skewcar (@Skewcar) September 15, 2024
Hamlin could only muster a 22nd place during qualifying a day prior. That placed him on the back foot and with the messy race at Watkins Glen, there was always a high possibility of being collected in someone else’s mess.
Hamlin says, “It’s not over yet”
Speaking about the final race in the round of 16 at Bristol, Hamlin was positive that he would run well there. He said, “We’ll be fine, I have no doubts that we are going to be good and up-front and control our own destiny.”
He further elaborated to the media, “It’s not over yet. It’s not over till the end of Bristol…” Hamlin will be hoping to make up the points deficit heading into Bristol. But considering the level of attrition so far and the JGR driver’s luck, things will certainly be hard.
If he wishes to stay out of the chaos as much as possible, he’d have to perform well during the upcoming qualifying rounds. If he falters there, there would be a massive risk of getting collected during next weekend’s race at the iconic short track.
Ultimately, that would mean he wouldn’t make it into the next round of the playoffs, formally exiting the championship hunt. So can he save his career? Well, that’ll only be clear after the race at Bristol.
