Denny Hamlin shared his thoughts about the media paying more attention to him and coming up short in his bid for his first NASCAR Championship at the finale in Phoenix.
Hamlin looked like he was going to win at Phoenix and get his first NASCAR Championship. However, it all went sideways when William Byron, who was running over a second behind Hamlin in second, suffered a flat tire with 3 laps left in the race.
The race would go into NASCAR Overtime with Denny Hamlin and his team choosing to change all four tires while Kyle Larson opted for two. On the final restart, Larson started in fifth while Hamlin started in 10th. Larson would quickly work his way to fourth coming out of turn 2 on the top side. Hamlin attempted to make a similar move on the bottom, but was stymied when he drew up against Joey Logano and only was able to move into 9th. Meanwhile, Larson was able to get around Ryan Preece on the outside and claim the third spot. Hamlin would only get up to sixth making his way around Josh Berry and Ryan Preece.
Much of the media attention following the race focused on how Hamlin had it nearly won, but ended up coming short due to the caution and pit strategy. Hamlin spoke to the media about this telling them, “I hate for him that kind of the attention is shifted a little bit away from him and his championship because he’s definitely-.”
He added, “There’s a difference in deserving and should have been, right? I think that there there’s not one person that should ever question his deservingness of being a champion. That’s what I don’t like to see.”
Hamlin also discussed how the loss has affected him telling members of the press, “This one’s deep.” He also indicated he’s been having trouble sleeping since Sunday.
He also responded to a question about whether or not he will compete next year, “I plan to. I have a contract to. At this point there’s just absolutely no way that I would even-. I don’t even think about the race car right now. I’m going to need some time on this one.”
“I’ll get over it,” he added. “Just it’s going to take a minute.”
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