Denny Hamlin said he wanted to put particular focus on Darlington. Before Sunday’s Cook Out Southern 500, the Joe Gibbs Racing driver felt his last two outings at the track had not been up to the mark. And for those who watched the closing moments of the first race of the Chase yesterday, it was clear that Hamlin’s so-called bad run had continued. The No. 11 driver, however, seemed surprisingly undeterred.

The result doesn’t tell the whole story. He finished both Stage 1 and Stage 2 in third. But a slow pit stop in the latter stage dropped him into traffic, where he made contact with Michael McDowell’s No. 71 car while working his way back up the field. Hamlin’s right front then made contact with the outside wall, leaving his Toyota with significant damage. He went a lap down but still managed to recover to 18th by the end, thanks to the efforts of his team. Hamlin addressed the misfortune in a post-race interview.

“We’ll do our best to execute a much better day next week than what we did this week. Still in the spot everybody else wishes they were,” he said to NASCAR media.

The standings remain unaffected despite Hamlin’s misfortune. He’s still the number one driver in the Chase, although the gap between him and the number two — which became Christopher Bell’s, thanks to his win on Sunday — has gone down to just 12 points.

Hamlin knows that he cannot afford another disaster, and it was something he was dreading pre-race. He admitted in an interview on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio that he had spoken to the No. 11 team, warning them about potential lapses and how costly they can be. He initiated a protocol of checking things three times, similar to how pilots check thrice before pushing a button in an aircraft.

After a highly consistent regular season that saw Hamlin reach Victory Lane four times, he had a somewhat rocky ending, plagued by issues with his brake pedal, like in Iowa, and miscommunication among his crew, like in New Hampshire. These hiccups could prove costly if repeated, and Hamlin already got a warning in Darlington.

The reporter trackside also asked Hamlin whether he was tired of driving damaged race cars, because he couldn’t prove himself in them. The 45-year-old, who’s in his 20th career post-season in the Cup Series, replied, “Not really. I mean, you know, it’s a professional sport, so you can’t have big mistakes. We just had a tough pit stop there that set us back from third to about 20th. Once we got back there, you know, you’re with guys that are a little bit more aggressive and don’t really care about the points or anything like that.”

Hamlin was, of course, referring to McDowell, who finished out of the Chase bubble and didn’t have any consequences to worry about in Darlington. So, he raced Hamlin more aggressively, which the JGR veteran felt caused the big incident that prevented his charge up front.

It was a disastrous start to the Chase for Hamlin, who entered as arguably the biggest favorite. In Daytona, he had admitted that Darlington would require particular focus. He finished seventh and 11th in his previous two races there, which is not quite up to the standards for someone who has won five times at the iconic circuit. But before that weekend, in New Hampshire, he said he was confident about winning all 10 races.

“You can’t always control all the variables, but I would say, you know, if I had to draw a schedule, it’d be as good as it could get for us,” Hamlin had said.

Well, Darlington is out of the way. And he still earned 32 valuable stage points from the weekend, which kept him at No. 1. That is what he will be hoping to build on heading into the next round in Madison.