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Hamlin Leads Toyota Charge By: Pete Pistone on July 18, 2011 | 1:28 P.M. EST
Denny Hamlin was the highest finishing Toyota driver in Sunday's Lenox Industrial Tools 301 at Loudon, N.H. (Photo: Getty Images)
PrintEmail ShareDenny Hamlin’s third place finish in Sunday’s Lenox Industrial Tools 301 led the way for five Toyota drivers to finish in the Top 10.
Joey Logano, Kasey Kahne, Bobby Labonte and Martin Truex Jr. joined Hamlin as the Toyota stable occupied half of the first ten finishing positions.
Hamlin’s solid run was the latest for the Joe Gibbs Racing driver as he tries to secure a berth in this year’s Chase and make another run for the Sprint Cup Series championship.
“Just perseverance on this FedEx team,” Hamlin said of his afternoon at New Hampshire Motor Speedway. “They don’t ever want to give up and they push me when I want to give up. It’s just one of those days where we had to battle back obviously. Third is a good day, but we just fought this car all day long and right there at the end we made one adjustment that really woke it up. Obviously, we were able to make moves there at the end towards the front.”
Hamlin’s JGR teammate Logano also was pleased with the effort of his team – including fuel strategy - to help him score another Top 5 finish in his recent string of successful efforts.
“The guys made the right call to just get fuel that time and saw some of those guys run out of fuel there at the end,” said Logano. “Everyone did a good job and we’ll take it. It’s cool to come up here to the Northeast – up at home and get a good, solid finish at New Hampshire.”
Kahne’s sixth place finish was bittersweet because of an earlier incident involving Team Red Bull running mate Brian Vickers. Kahne was racing with Dave Blaney down the frontstretch and when things got three-wide, the two teammates made contact sending Vickers hard into the outside wall.
“Then it would have been two-wide for me and Brian back at the start-finish so I thought we would just stay there and be two- wide at the start-finish,” Kahne said explaining his rationale. “Brian must not have known that I stayed there. He probably thought that I was going to back out. I wish that wouldn’t have happened for sure, but I was there.”
Fuel mileage was also a key for Labonte, who drove the JTG Daugherty Racing entry home for his second Top 10 finish of the season and first since the season-opening Daytona 500.
“We fought track position all day,” said Labonte. “These guys -- we put two tires on, four tires on and we weren’t faster than a lot of guys -- it was just track position. There at the end we put four tires on with 81 laps to go and we made it all the way on fuel.”
Finally a Top 10 for Truex Jr. was a solid effort but in truth the Michael Waltrip Racing driver had hoped for a little bit more at Loudon.
“I know this isn’t exactly how we wanted to finish,” Truex said. “It wasn’t pretty, but with the bad luck we’ve had all season, it’s nice to come out on the positive side of things.
“It feels good to leave this place with eighth so we all can go and enjoy the off-weekend.”