| | | | | | MOTIVATED TO WIN | Hamlin ready to make up for Richmond disappointment | |
|  | | CIA Stock Photo | Hamlin knows that hunger won’t be enough to win Saturday’s Dodge Challenger 500. | | Jared Turner / SceneDaily.com Perhaps no task would be more daunting than finding a driver more motivated than Denny Hamlin to win Saturday night’s NASCAR Sprint Cup race at Darlington Raceway.
Nary a week has passed since a cut tire robbed the Joe Gibbs Racing driver of an almost sure victory last weekend at Richmond International Raceway.
If that's not incentive enough, Hamlin has since faced a steady steam of reminders about the race in which he led all but one of the first 382 laps before being relegated to a 24th-place finish.
“It’s definitely frustrating because you watch highlights and you watch things like that and it just kind of reminds you,” Hamlin said Friday.
How much would the driver of the No. 11 Toyota like to atone for the disappointment of last weekend at Darlington?
“We’re hungry for sure,” he said. “We’re as hungry as we’ve ever been.”
Hamlin knows that hunger won’t be enough to win Saturday’s Dodge Challenger 500, however.
The already-tricky Darlington track has been even more of headache than usual this weekend to drivers and teams trying to get a handle on a newly installed racing surface that has speeds up and uncertainty high.
Spins, crashes and general encounters with the outside wall have occurred with the regularity of a church bell since teams unloaded Thursday for an extra day of practice.
Hamlin, who crashed a potential pole-winning car in Nationwide Series qualifying and consequently failed to make the race, has not been exempt from problems.
“Your margin of error is so small,” said Hamlin, who starts 21st in the Cup event. “For the most part, when you run that close to the wall and then you get guys that try to pass each other if someone doesn’t want to give, it’s going to cause a lot of wrecks.”
Wrecking may not even be as hard for Hamlin to swallow as failing to put a dominant car in victory lane again.
“You don’t get many opportunities to win races,” he said. “It’s definitely more frustrating for myself when I do have a race-winning car to not bring the trophy home. You don’t know how long you’re going to be competitive. You don’t know how long you’re going to be on top of your game as far as this sport is concerned.
“When you miss out on a win, you take it a little bit more to heart than when you didn’t have a racing-winning car anyway.”
| | Posted May 09, 2008 , 9:28 pm EST
Last Updated May 11, 2008 , 5:38 pm EST | | | | | | | | | | |
