Motorsports

Hamlin's caution results in second

By TIMES STAFF WRITER
Published May 9, 2006

It should have been so simple. But Denny Hamlin was in a quandary.

He was in his first Nextel Cup race at his hometown track in Richmond on Saturday night, running second in the final laps. Short-track racing almost dictated he nudge that first-place car aside, if he could catch it.

But Hamlin knew that, as much as the throng would love to see the local break through with his first win at NASCAR's highest level, its allegiances had longer been tied to the bright red Chevrolet running just ahead.

"Last thing I want to do is wreck Dale ( Earnhardt) Jr.," Hamlin said after finishing second, his best Nextel Cup result. "I have a decent fan base now. I don't want to kill it."

That doesn't mean the Brandon-born rookie wouldn't have risked it.

Good friends with Earnhardt since he was racing Late Models in Virginia, where his family moved when he was a toddler, the 25-year-old knew his buddy would expect nothing less.

"There's no other person I would rather be racing for the win there at the end. I'm sure he was thinking the exact same thing I was as far as how I was going to race him," Hamlin said. "He knew I was going to put the bumper to him if I ever got to him. He asked me even in Victory Lane when I went over there and said "Man why didn't you lay into me?' I said, "Man if I had the chance, I would have.' It was definitely going to be a whole lot more physical had I had a little bit better car."

Earnhardt expected no less because he has given Hamlin the same treatment, at least at the game console.

"Every time I raced him in video games, I won," said Earnhardt, who invited Hamlin to Daytona to hang out in 2004, when Hamlin was an unknown in the Joe Gibbs Racing developmental program. "If I wasn't going to win, I made sure he lost. We raced a lot of times on video games, I mean a lot. We've had some pretty fun races. Otherwise I've never really raced against him aside from when he beat me and Tony ( Stewart) there at the Shootout earlier this year."

The statistics will say he finished fourth, but after a frustrating and star-crossed first nine races in which he qualified and raced well but finished 31st or worse five times, Greg Biffle celebrated like a winner on Saturday.

Biffle was especially excited after fighting back onto the lead lap when a decision to pit and take fuel - he ran out at the end of the Phoenix race - nearly cost him.

"I won! I finally won! It feels like a win," he said. "We had a great race car and just, unfortunately, stopped when we felt like it was safe and a lot of guys stayed out a lot longer than we thought and caught us a lap down. We just fought and fought to get back. I'm just pretty excited to finish in the top five."

Full practice began Tuesday for the May 28 Indianapolis 500 and Saturday's Pole Day.

A full field of 33 is expected with several entries not a part of the full Indy Racing League season.

A score of drivers unretiring for the event - such as team owners Michael Waltrip and Eddie Cheever Jr., and two-time former winner Al Unser Jr. - have bolstered the entry list.

Scott Speed, the first full-time American in Formula One since 1993, had a career-best 11th-place finish on Sunday in the European Grand Prix, mainly because several cars fell out of the race. And he had a good time driving from his home base in Austria to Nuerburgring, Germany, on the Autobahn. During portions of the six-hour drive in free-speed zones, he was able to hit 168 mph in his Maserati Gran Sport.

[Last modified May 9, 2006, 00:41:15]