This NASCAR season is certainly off to a rousing, if unpredictable, start...but look who's back atop the Sprint Cup standings

  Crew chief Mike Ford (L) and Denny Hamlin: clicking once again (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)
  

   By Mike Mulhern
   mikemulhern.net

   MARTINSVILLE, Va.
   Uh, now how again did Denny Hamlin pull this one off?
   And, ah, Mike Ford, could you explain just what the heck you were thinking with that late four-tire call....while all the rest of the guys still on the lead lap were staying out on the track and picking up track position on you and Denny?
   Yes, there will be a lot of second-guessing in the wake of Monday's Martinsville Goody's 500. A lot of guys gave this one away.
   And in the end, well, Denny Hamlin just stole it back from them. And teammate Joey Logano finished second. (Both men were on Raybestos brakes, on a day when brakes were quite an issue.)
   Obviously Hamlin's sore left knee wasn't much hindrance.
   Ford, not known as a gambling crew chief, but rather a quite thoughtful one, conceded the obvious, in explaining his dilemma: "Coming down to the end, leading the race here at Martinsville, the last place you want to be when the caution comes out with 10 to go is the leader...because everyone is going to take cuts at you.
    "And you wonder if you have enough time to get back."
    Ford said he started pondering possible late-race scenarios while battling Jeff Burton with about 30 laps to go...."and watching the weather also," Ford said, with a nod toward the heavy black clouds that began rolling toward Martinsville Speedway with still more than 130 laps to go in the scheduled 500-lapper.
    "But it's probably the most difficult call on pit road -- leading the race inside 10 to go," Ford said. "We had 65 laps on our tires, so new tires were going to be fast...but you don't know what everyone else is going to do."
   Well, yes, you do. If you're the leader, whatever you do, most of the rest of the guys are going to do the opposite. It's almost a no-win.
    "If we didn't pit, I can assure you 90 percent of the guys behind us would have pitted, and we would have definitely lost," Hamlin said.
     "No matter what we do at the end of this race -- whether we pit or don't -- it was going to be about a 20 percent chance we win."
      "You know whatever you do, the guys behind you are going to try and play you," Ford said. "So your cards are shown when you commit either way.
     "They're waiting to see what you're going to do. Their only opportunity to win is to do the opposite.
      "So I'm thinking maybe three attempts at a green-white-checkered (another new NASCAR rule this season). That played into the decision.
     "You're stacking new tires up with old tires, guys are going to get aggressive, somebody is going to get the short end of the stick...and it's going to be the guys that stayed out."
     Well, he can say that in victory lane.
     Still, despite perhaps some doubts on those late restarts, Hamlin was game: "I told Mike during practice Saturday there was no doubt we were going to win this race. I didn't think it was going to be this hard, or that dramatic at the end."
    And Hamlin's sore knee? "It bothered me a little bit probably the last 100 laps.
     "But you're so focused on trying to win the race it overcomes a lot of any kind of pain you have."
       How crazy was it those last two laps?
       "I'm trying to play it back, and I don't even remember what happened," Hamlin said with a grin. "I remember going in the corner, I remember getting in the back of Ryan Newman. I think Matt Kenseth got in the back of Jeff Gordon.
    "I don't know where Ryan went. I might have knocked him up high. I don't even know, to be honest.
     "Coming off of two, I saw Gordon and Kenseth were kind of locked together going down the backstretch.
     "I was going to stick it three-wide.
     "As soon as I saw my lift-point, I saw Kenseth still going in (hard). I said 'Well, I can't make it with new tires, so there's no way he'll make it with old tires.'
      " I knew the best thing to do was to be patient, let him slide up."
    And when Kenseth did, so did Gordon.
     Hamlin took the low road and ran way.
    "I didn't know what caused that last caution," Hamlin said, referring to the Busch incident that set up the overtime sprint. "But I was definitely relieved to see it.
     "I think I was going to finish second or third. I wasn't going to catch Gordon, unless Kenseth got into him on the last lap, had that caution not come out."
    The win was not only Hamlin's first of the season but it was also his first since getting the media's nod as pre-race title favorite. And he came into this race a dismal 19th in the standings. Hamlin still only moved up to 15th in the NASCAR standings.
    "I feel we haven't even got a chance to show what we have yet," Hamlin said. "We've had three blown tires in the first five races, and that really put a damper on things.
    "Atlanta we could have won. Bristol we never really got to show what we had before we cut a tire...
    "Usually this (track) is where we start turning it up....and I don't see that bar going up going down anytime soon. I think it's still going to keep getting better. For whatever reason, it just takes a little while for me and Mike to get back in rhythm.
     "Think it's starting to come through again."
 

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