Edward Lewis – AHN Sports Reporter
Martinsville, VA, United States (AHN) – Denny Hamlin knew one of his home-state tracks could make a difference in his Chase chances and it has for now.
Hamlin started from the pole and drove home to a win in the Tums Fast Relief 500 Sunday at Martinsville Speedway. It was Hamlin’s third consecutive win at Martinsville, his series-best seventh of the season and 15th of his career.
Mark Martin ran second and was followed by Kevin Harvick, Kyle Busch and points leader Jimmie Johnson, whose lead was trimed to six points with four races left in the season.
“Yeah, we certainly wanted to be better today with the Lowe’s Impala but the long run there at the end just wasn’t what our car needed at that point in time,” said Johnson. “On the short runs we were a lot better and more competitive. But another top five, we can’t be too disappointed in that.”
Harvick’s run allowed him to remain in third in the standings, 62 points out of the lead, while Chaser Carl Edwards ran seventh and was followed by Jeff Burton in eighth.
“The handling on our car just kind of went away and we just lost front grip there I the middle of the corners; he was just able to roll in the center. But I’ve just got to thank all these guys and really, everybody from RCR and our whole Shell/Pennzoil Chevrolet team,” said Harvick.
“They’ve done a great job at what we call some of our worst race tracks, and we come here where we felt like we’re running we and never had a top five so to come out of here today with a third is what it’s all about. We’ll just keep racing and keep hanging in there and keep racing hard.”
Joey Logano finished sixth and was followed by Dale Earnhardt Jr., while Brad Keselowski finished 10th overall.
As for the other Chasers in the race, Matt Kenseth and Kurt Busch ran 15th and 16th respectively, Jeff Gordon finished 20th and Tony Stewart was 24th.
“We were racing hard. We got shuffled back on the pit stop before that. We ran him down quite a bit, we were quite a bit faster than him. I dove inside of him in turn three and I definitely over-shot it a little bit,” said Gordon of a race incident with Kurt Busch.
“Either he didn’t know I was there or whatever and cut down on me and I got into him. Kurt Busch doesn’t have a very long fuse so either it was pay-back or he just got angry really quick and decided to wreck us. We just did what we could do to come home with the best finish we could.”
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