NASCAR CUP SERIES: ALLY 400

June 25, 2023

Denny Hamlin

Pit Lane Interview

Q. It sure looked like you could be the one in Victory Lane today. Where did the car go at the end?

DENNY HAMLIN: The field is so close, everyone is running the same time. It's real hard to get track position.

I think we really had a third-place car. The entire race I thought the 19 was better. The 1 obviously came on strong there at the end. It's all we had with our FedEx Toyota.

This is not the (indiscernible) day, it was a day with no mistakes. We gave ourselves a chance. Didn't have quite a fast enough car to go and contend.

Q. You were racing your teammate Martin Truex pretty well. How would you describe that racing? Here at Nashville we've come to expect that.

DENNY HAMLIN: Yeah, I mean, the side by side is really just because both guys know whoever gets out front is going to set the pace.

Q. You can't give it up?

DENNY HAMLIN: No, you can't. With everything being the same on the car, the track position means more than anything. You got to battle. We saw some great three-wide racing early on on the restarts.

Yeah, just wish I had a little more speed. That's what we needed.

Q. Nine more races. You're in with the Kansas win. What do you need out of your weeks coming to that?

DENNY HAMLIN: Really weeks like this where nothing crazy goes on, we optimize our day.

We're usually going to find ourselves with a shot to win most weeks, as long as we don't make any mistakes and keep our track position. That's what we did today.