Denny Hamlin! Again!

  Denny Hamlin -- another perfect Sunday. No one could touch him. (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)
  

    By Mike Mulhern
    mikemulhern.net

   BROOKLYN, Mich.
   Title contender Denny Hamlin ripped off yet another victory Sunday – Toyota's second straight Cup win at this Detroit-area speedway – and not even a late-race yellow, which erased a nine-second Hamlin lead and gave main rivals Kasey Kahne, Jeff Gordon and Kurt Busch one final shot, could derail Hamlin and crew chief Mike Ford.
   And that makes it a Toyota sweep for the NASCAR weekend: Aric Amirola winning Friday's Truck 200 here, Joey Logano taking Saturday's Nationwide 300 at Kentucky, and now Hamlin, with his fifth win in the tour's last 10 Sprint Cup events....and his second straight.
   "I knew that debris caution was coming, so the best thing for me to do was to back off and save my tires," Hamlin said. "But we've got to do what we need to put on a show for the fans."
    "It's just been an unbelievable season for us," Hamlin said. "Now I know how Jimmie (Johnson) has felt the last four years."
    He led a whopping 123 of the 200 laps, and only had a brief scare during the first round of pit stops when he stretched his run perhaps a lap too long and felt his engine sputter briefly as he returned to the track, air in the carburetor.
   Kahne had the second-best car and challenged: "We've had a lot of downs this year, so it felt nice to put a full race together. I don't think we're out of the chase yet, but we're right on the edge. We've got to put together four or five more runs like this.
   "I didn't like it when he walked away from us at the end....but I wasn't surprised. He's had a strong car the past two months."
   Toyota-Ford-Dodge-Chevy, 1-2-3-4 at the finish. And Rick Hendrick's men did well, with Jeff Gordon, Tony Stewart, Jimmie Johnson and surprising Dale Earnhardt Jr. 4-5-6-7. Ford's Greg Biffle also was in the hunt much of the afternoon, finishing just ahead of Logano. But it was an off day for Kevin Harvick; the tour leader, still, struggled in 19th, just ahead of Kyle Busch, still No. 2 in the standings but also having a bad day.
   The race was rather uneventful, breaking against the norm this season...though teammates Casey Mears and Scott Speed managed to run into each other inadvertantly while dueling for 30th early in the race. Boring? Well, that may be subjective, but it should be pointed out that speeds here are nearly 190 mph, and back in the 1980s, when this track had a reputation for some of the best racing on the stock car tour, the speeds were in the low 160s.
    Debris on the grill hurt Kahne at times. "The water temperature went up to 280 (normally it's 210)...but after we cleaned it off it went back down," Kahne said. "It's good to know this new engine (Ford's FR9) can handle the heat."
    Kahne said the FR9 was a marked improvement in power and let him suck up in the draft much better than last week at Pocono, where he was running the old Ford 452 engine. Kahne had the strongest Ford at Pocono nevertheless, just as he had the strongest Ford here. Kahne has been Ford's top driver over the spring.
    Of course Kahne has already signed with Chevy's Rick Hendrick for 2011, though just what he might drive is still apparently up in the air.
   Kahne said the new Ford engine was clearly an improvement: "We actually something we could work with today, and that was nice," Kahne said.
    That late-race debris caution?
   "There was a big piece of debris back there, and I felt good for a moment," Kahne said. "I thought I could hang with Denny (on the restart). And I did hang with him for three laps. But then he started sneaking away.
    "Darlington and Dover we also had good cars but just made errors. It felt good to put together a complete race."
    Kurt Busch looked to have the strongest car early on, but then Hamlin and Kahne got hot.
   "I thought we had something good brewing for us today," Busch said. "It wasn't that we lost anything as the day went on, but the other guys just got better.
   "Denny Hamlin deserves all the credit."
 
                                               
The results of Sunday's Michigan 400

   
      

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   Mike Ford's crew was right on target for Denny Hamlin in Sunday's 400 (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)