“It just didn't work”: Denny Hamlin explains strange decision to pit during overtime at Martinsville

Joe Gibbs Racing driver Denny Hamlin opened up about the woeful late-race pitstop that robbed him of the contention at the 415-lap run at Martinsville.

The Hendrick Motorsports stable exercised its dominance at the eighth Cup Series weekend as the race concluded in their favor at the Martinsville Speedway. The North Carolina-based outfit raked in an unseen 1-2-3 finish, clinched by William Byron, Kyle Larson, and Chase Elliott, respectively.

The #11 Toyota driver locked the eighth place on the grid after hitting the fastest lap time at 19.779 seconds, falling shy of 0.061 seconds over the polesitter Kyle Larson. After finishing Stage 1 in P7, Denny Hamlin climbed the charts during the Stage 2 run, emerging victorious and collecting 10 points.

However, on Lap 399, a right front failure on John Hunter Nemechek's car issued a caution and Hamlin grabbed the opportunity to pit in. However, the plan "didn't work" the way Hamlin and his crew chief Chris Gabehart had planned.

The Florida native entered the pitlane in P4 but saw a drop in his track position, restarting his run from P10 and coming home with a P11 finish. Shortly after getting robbed of a potentially promising result, Denny Hamlin detailed the decision to pit during the overtime, saying (via Frontstretch on X):

"We ran good, certainly didn't get the finish we deserved but we still ran really well. We were just trying to do something to try to drag others down to pit road with us, and it just didn't work." (1:22)

Denny Hamlin indulges in an online war with Speedway Motorsports CEO

In December, last year, the 2.52-mile Sonoma Raceway was repaved for the first time in 23 years. After two months of work on the asphalt, the project was completed in February 2024. However, a few days before kicking off his eighth Cup Series weekend, the JGR driver reacted to a Reddit post that highlighted a damaged patch on the Raceway.

Seeing that, Denny Hamlin took a sarcastic jibe for carrying out the repaving jobs on a budget. However, the 43-year-old's words didn't sit well with the CEO of Speedway Motorsports (owner of Sonoma Raceway), Marcus Smith, and an online war ignited.

Both took jibes at the other, but when Hamlin riposted Smith's inheritance of the position from his father, Bruton Smith, Marcus lost his cool, writing:

"So listen here, almost @NASCAR champion, you keep working at it and one day you're gonna get a big trophy!"