Joe Gibbs Racing veteran Denny Hamlin has shared his feelings about losing the Phoenix race to his teammate Christopher Bell.
Joe Gibbs Racing veteran Denny Hamlin came into the NASCAR Cup Series race at Phoenix Raceway on Sunday with the hope of ending his winless run. But his teammate Christopher Bell had other plans, as he secured a third straight race win, defeating veterans Hamlin and Kyle Larson, in an impressive two laps run.
The last lap battle between, Christopher Bell and Denny Hamlin, with Kyle Larson trying to sneak from behind was controlled chaos. The No:20 TRD driver gave the No:11 Toyota some side bumps to keep the lead and went on to win the races. This left the three times Daytona 500 winner furious, and he ranted on team radio.
“GOD DAMMIT! F*CK!!!” – Denny Hamlin said on team radio.
In his post-race interview, Hamlin shared his feelings about his teammate performance and the dominant win. He admitted that he doesn’t have any idea about how his teammate is dominating the races but added that whatever they are doing is pretty impressive.
“I mean obviously you see a gain in performance there, but you don’t; it could be a lot of different things. Car’s better, is it circumstances in a speedway race or road course race? Or this one, I guess he probably dominated, right? …I don’t know, circumstance or not three in a row is pretty impressive and whatever they’re doing is just working well” – Denny Hamlin said.
Denny Hamlin is happy with the great finish for JGR
Though, he missed out on the win, Denny Hamlin is happy over the JGR 1-2 finish on Sunday and how he had the opportunity to overtake his teammate late in the race. But he didn’t have enough time to make the final move.
“We got a good restart. The 5 really gave me a great push on the frontstretch on the restart, down the backstretch. I had kind of position on the 20. I knew he was going to ship it in there. He had to use me. He could. Obviously, we just kind of ran out of racetrack there. Great finish. Great job by the whole Joe Gibbs team to give us some fast cars.” – Denny Hamlin said.
Though the win isn’t a good look for Denny Hamlin, it’s good news for his team as they have the right cars to win races in the coming days. It would be interesting to see when the veteran can end his winless streak.
