Denny Hamlin Wins Daytona 500 in Closest Finish Ever

After failing to win “The Great American Race” since joining the Sprint Cup Series in 2005, Hamlin had a last lap dash to the front to edge out Martin Treux Jr.at the line to pick up the victory.

“This is just one race, but seeing and feeling that teamwork with JGR”, Truex said of his career-best finish at Daytona.

“Woo! How about that [bleep]”, Hamlin said as he strutted into the media center at Daytona International Speedway, knocking down a microphone for ecstatic emphasis.

Number one on our list has to belong to the closest finish in the history of NASCAR’s top series.

And thanks to Truex Jr., now there really is a “we”.

“This was a team victory”.

Toyota Racing Development president David Wilson called this the biggest win in Toyota history, better than even an Indianapolis 500 victory in 2003.

“I don’t remember it – honestly”, Hamlin said. “I’m proud of what we did…. This is the plate race, and now we go to Atlanta where we’ve got to run our new open stuff and see how we stack up”. We had an excellent pusher during the race.

DiBenedetto later added: “I have no excuse. It’s insane, it happened so fast”.

With a Hail Mary move Sunday, Hamlin ended Gibbs 23-year drought at the Daytona 500.

“It’s the pinnacle of my career, for sure”.

Kyle Busch, for so long a wild, loud-mouthed driver hailing from Las Vegas rather than the Deep South that is NASCAR’s heartland, won the Cup for Toyota and Joe Gibbs Racing (JGR) last November, although Chevrolet won its 39th – and 13th straight – manufacturers’ championship. The victory was the first in the Daytona 500 since 1993 for Gibbs, a three-time Super Bowl victor as coach of the Washington Redskins.

“He’s grateful”, Joe Gibbs said of his son, via Brian Schmitz of the Orlando Sentinel. “I felt like I let my team down pretty much for two weeks straight here and today was no exception to that”.

“He’s the guy that took a chance on me”, Hamlin told reporters.

Hamlin had led nearly half the race but with one lap to go sat fourth before making a daring push to the front, brushing past 2009 and 2012 victor Kenseth, who lost control and dropped back into the pack.

Kevin Harvick, who was fifth, managed to give Hamlin a bump which sent the 35-year-old rocketing to the front. “But to have him here with me today, that’s just how it was supposed to be, wasn’t it?” “I thought we had them where we wanted them, but we know how this place is”. “We were starting to move forward, getting aggressive and yeah, I just lost it”.

“It’s hard to make those decisions”. He got there on the left rear and got me loose.

More than a decade after Spencer’s photo finish, Jamie McMurray outdid the feat, using a push from Carl Edwards, and a side-draft off Kyle Busch, to just edge Busch at the start/finish line, winning by 0.005 seconds.

Indeed, there were four Toyotas in the top five.

“I mean, I could have chopped (Earnhardt) a little bit more, but I saw in my mirror it would have been close and it’s just not – this isn’t the time to cut it close”, Hamlin said. “Sometimes you just come up a little short”. “We were not ready”.

As an elementary school student at Grange Hall Elementary, Hamlin wrote he wished he would, one day, win the prestigious NASCAR race.

“You’ve got to give those guys a lot of credit”, Gibbs said.

I also want to thank our FRR crew both at the track and back at the shop in Denver.

“There’s a million things you could do differently, but I did what I thought I should do at the time to try to win”.