Denny Hamlin’s two poor finishes have stunted his Sprint Cup title bid

By ANTHONY ANDRO

The Sprint Cup Chase for the Championship is showing just how overrated momentum is.

Three of the hottest drivers entering the Chase were Denny Hamlin, Kasey Kahne and Brian Vickers.

Halfway through the 10-race playoff, they are ninth (Kahne), 11th (Hamlin) and 12th (Vickers) and have almost no shot at winning the title.

Kahne and Vickers you can almost understand.

Kahne had highs and lows throughout the season and hasn’t been consistent enough to win a title. Vickers was just happy to make his first Chase appearance.

But Hamlin is another story.

"For me this year I’m going to look back on it, and obviously be very disappointed," he said during the weekly Sprint Cup teleconference. "We came into the Chase with so much momentum and have performed extremely well on the racetrack. If they gave points for us running up front for most of the time we’d maybe have a shot at this championship. But, unfortunately, they don’t. It’s only on finishing position. That’s bitten us right at the very end."

It’s not so much where Hamlin has finished in the last two Chase races that has dashed his hopes, it’s that he hasn’t finished at all. Two weeks ago at California he was leading the race on a restart when he came down across Juan Pablo Montoya and started an accident.

Hamlin, who took responsibility for the wreck, went from a contender to 37th. He also dropped from sixth to ninth in the standings.

If that wasn’t enough, a broken part relegated him to a 42nd-place showing last weekend at Charlotte. He’s now 372 points out of the lead. After one Chase race, that deficit was just 35 points.

Because things can change quickly under the Chase format, Hamlin wishes NASCAR could find a way to tweak the system, and still reward drivers for running consistently all season.

"Maybe we’re not spread out enough," he said. "After the season ends and the Chase begins, we are only separated by 10 points, 20 points, when someone like Tony [Stewart] has accumulated a 200-point lead or what have you. That was my only thing."

Hamlin knows changes in the format aren’t likely to happen. His focus is finishing strong and trying to make a run for his first title in 2010.

While he’s not happy where he is in the points, he has five races to make up ground starting with Sunday’s Tums Fast Relief 500 at Martinsville, Va. Hamlin has a win and seven top-10 finishes in his eight starts at the track.

"My goal was as soon as California happened, I said 'Let’s win one more race, at least one more race before the end of the season,’ " he said.

"That would get us more wins than we have had in any year at three. We’re going to run well. We’re going to contend for every race win from here on out, I’m absolutely sure of that. But we need to finish them off, get those wins and try to get as high in the points as we can."

Who’s hot

Matt Kenseth: Apparently Kenseth isn’t giving up on his season just because he didn’t make the Chase for the first time in his career. Kenseth finished second at Lowe’s Motor Speedway. It was his best finish since he won the second race of the season in California and it moved him to 13th in the standings.

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