The Next-Gen car has been criticized for its low horsepower and poor performance on short tracks to no end, but Sunday gave one of the best short track races in a long time. The racing and strategy battles were so good that the new aero package even made a believer out of race winner Denny Hamlin. The Joe Gibbs Racing star has long been a vocal supporter of high horsepower, but he wasn’t singing the same tune at Bristol.

Speed was not what mattered most in this race; it was tire management. For Hamlin, that is comfortable territory. He is a veteran of the sport and grew up around short tracks in his younger days. His only real challenger was Martin Truex Jr and the driver of the #11 did a fantastic job of keeping his teammate at bay.

Denny Hamlin acknowledges that horsepower isn’t everything

Several people have said that horsepower was not the only thing that mattered when it came to short-track racing, and Denny Hamlin joined the bandwagon shortly after getting out of his car. Speaking to Bob Pockrass, the 43-year-old said that it was a mix of elements like horsepower and tire management that would make racing at this kind of track better.

“We didn’t need any more horsepower today. Today was seconds of falloff. It was incredible,” he said. “It’s an equation, horsepower and tire, you want off-throttle time.” 

As other racers either came in too early or a little too late, the #11 came into the pits at just the right time and rejoined the race in the best possible position. It was incredible that no caution came out in the last 100 laps of stage 3 when almost every single car on the track was slipping around due to tire wear. But there was only one dominant force.

Joe Gibbs Racing was undoubtedly the strongest team on Sunday, which makes it two weeks in a row that this has happened. At one point, it was Hamlin, Truex, Ty Gibbs, and Christopher Bell running in the top four in stage 3. The battle between the two veterans for the win at the end was incredible, and the driver of the #11 only had kind words for his teammate.

Joe Gibbs Racing star hails the pit crew after holding off his teammate’s charge

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Martin Truex Jr is a veteran of the sport and a former Cup Series champion, so it’s no wonder that he gave his teammate a hard time there at the end. But in a race of strategy, the driver is never going to be enough. The importance of the pit crew in this type of race cannot be overstated, and had the #11 crew not gotten it right with their pitstop, we would be looking at a different race winner. Denny Hamlin knows that all too well.

“Yeah just, that’s what I grew up doing here in the short tracks of the whole mid-Atlantic, so South Boston, Martinsville, all those tracks, that’s what I grew up doing. Once it became a tire management race, I really liked our chances, but obviously, the veteran in Martin, he knew how to do it as well and so, we just had a great car, a great team. Pit crew just did a phenomenal job all day, can’t say enough about them…(..)..feels so good to win at Bristol,” he said after the race.

With a spot in the playoffs booked, the 43-year-old’s charge for a maiden Cup Series championship has well and truly begun. He will be full of confidence heading into next week’s Cup Series race at the iconic Circuit of the Americas.

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