NASCAR CUP SERIES: YELLAWOOD 500

October 2, 2022

Denny Hamlin

Pit Lane Interview

Q. Denny, what more did you need in stage three to challenge for the win?

DENNY HAMLIN: Not much really. It's so hard to pass. I know you've all heard that. It's a train of two lines. You can't run three-wide with this car. You got to just sit behind whoever is right there in front of you and hope you can push that line a little bit forward. Hopefully they switch the lanes, then you can leap forward.

Yeah, that's kind of what we got right now. I feel like we executed a pretty good day. Our goal going into the day was five stage points. If we got more than five in the first stage, we were going to punt in stage two, try to get a good finish. That's what we did.

Overall a good day. I was able to give Chase the push right there to get to the outside. I thought about should I go with him and force the 43 up. I always know I've got somebody coming with help behind me, McDowell.

Q. Why didn't you go with him?

DENNY HAMLIN: Then I'd be in the middle. The risk wasn't worth going back to 15th if I ended up getting stuck in the middle. To me, this is the three-race season that you have, you points race.

Q. You leave here 21 points to the good. Is that a successful day in your eyes?

DENNY HAMLIN: We accomplished what we were trying to do. What other guys did, we couldn't change that.

Would I like to have more? Yes. Obviously we executed the day we wanted to. Better than what we started the day, we'll take it.