Together with his victory Sunday at Dover (Del.) Motor Speedway, Hamlin earned his series-best third NASCAR Cup win of the 2024 season within the first 11 races.
Oddly sufficient, nonetheless, Hamlin’s victories are additionally his solely prime 5 finishes of the yr. And he has only one different end within the prime 10 – an eighth at Las Vegas.
Whereas he has 4 finishes of nineteenth or worse – together with back-to-back finishes of thirtieth and thirty seventh heading into Dover – Hamlin has led a number of laps in each race this season.
It has been one of the vital aggressive seasons of Hamlin’s distinguished and practically 20-year Cup profession, however it’s not all the time mirrored within the end result.
“I believe we’ve led in each race this yr, and never by chance or pit cycles. We’ve legit led,” Hamlin mentioned Sunday. “I might say that is essentially the most aggressive (season). It’s most likely solely our third prime 5 although.
“We have now three wins, three prime fives. We both crash or we win. I actually want I might have Texas again and some others.”
The great factor for Hamlin is as soon as he earned his first win of the yr at Bristol, he grew to become locked within the playoffs, leaving him and his group the liberty to not fear about incomes factors, however as a substitute discovering methods so as to add extra wins.
“It feels good. Within the groove proper now for certain,” he mentioned. “Definitely you’re feeling such as you need to rejoice these since you simply by no means know if it’s your final or something like that. I’m simply so targeted this season on getting lots of wins, attempting to maneuver that tally up as excessive as I can.
“I count on to win each week. There’s no motive I shouldn’t count on to win.”
Earlier this week on his podcast, Hamlin mentioned he might win any – or all – of the upcoming three-race stretch at Dover, Kansas and Darlington, tracks on which he has traditionally been profitable.
True to his phrase, he ended up in Victory Lane at Dover, and that was after taking a bat-like swing of the checkered flag initially/end line in reference to “calling his shot.”
Nonetheless, the victory didn’t come simple as Hamlin needed to fend off a fierce problem from sequence factors chief Kyle Larson as the 2 raced just about nostril to tail over the ultimate 5 laps.
Larson had beat Hamlin off pit street on the ultimate spherical of inexperienced flag stops, however Hamlin reclaimed it on the monitor on the subsequent restart.
Though he was in one of the best place out entrance, Hamlin was not essentially assured of the result.
“I believe there’s definitely some which might be higher at defending their spot than others. I don’t put myself very excessive on that record,” he mentioned.
“I believe I’m most likely fairly low on that record, which makes me just a little nervous whenever you’re going up towards Kyle on the finish of the race, somebody that’s not afraid to maneuver across the race monitor. I used to be definitely nervous.
“I additionally knew that so long as I simply did my job, hit my marks, didn’t have any main blowup laps – that’s one the place it pokes how excessive on the graph the place I missed my line or bought caught in visitors – then I used to be going to have the ability to maintain him off. He definitely made it extra fascinating than what I actually needed.”
