With his victory Sunday at Dover (Del.) Motor Speedway, Hamlin earned his series-best third NASCAR Cup win of the 2024 season in the first 11 races.
Oddly enough, however, Hamlin’s victories are also his only top five finishes of the year. And he has just one other finish in the top 10 – an eighth at Las Vegas.
While he has four finishes of 19th or worse – including back-to-back finishes of 30th and 37th heading into Dover – Hamlin has led multiple laps in every race this season.
It has been one of the most competitive seasons of Hamlin’s distinguished and nearly 20-year Cup career, but it is not always reflected in the result.
“I think we’ve led in every race this year, and not by accident or pit cycles. We’ve legit led,” Hamlin said Sunday. “I would say this is the most competitive (season). It’s probably only our third top five though.
“We have three wins, three top fives. We either crash or we win. I really wish I could have Texas back and a few others.”
The good thing for Hamlin is once he earned his first win of the year at Bristol, he became locked in the playoffs, leaving him and his team the freedom to not worry about earning points, but instead finding ways to add more wins.
“It feels good. In the groove right now for sure,” he said. “Certainly you feel like you want to celebrate these because you just never know if it’s your last or anything like that. I’m just so focused this season on getting a lot of wins, trying to move that tally up as high as I can.
“I expect to win every week. There’s no reason I shouldn’t expect to win.”
Earlier this week on his podcast, Hamlin said he could win any – or all – of the upcoming three-race stretch at Dover, Kansas and Darlington, tracks on which he has historically been successful.
True to his word, he ended up in Victory Lane at Dover, and that was after taking a bat-like swing of the checkered flag at the start/finish line in reference to “calling his shot.”
Still, the victory did not come easy as Hamlin had to fend off a fierce challenge from series points leader Kyle Larson as the two raced virtually nose to tail over the final five laps.
Larson had beat Hamlin off pit road on the final round of green flag stops, but Hamlin reclaimed it on the track on the next restart.
Although he was in the best position out front, Hamlin was not necessarily confident of the outcome.
“I think there’s certainly some that are better at defending their spot than others. I don’t put myself very high on that list,” he said.
“I think I’m probably pretty low on that list, which makes me a little worried when you’re going up against Kyle at the end of the race, someone that’s not afraid to move around the race track. I was certainly nervous.
“I also knew that as long as I just did my job, hit my marks, didn’t have any major blowup laps – that’s one where it pokes how high on the graph where I missed my line or got caught in traffic – then I was going to be able to hold him off. He certainly made it more interesting than what I really wanted.”
