Denny Hamlin Making Appearance on “Live with Kelly and Michael”

Denny Hamlin’s photo-finish victory at the Daytona 500 is generating millions of dollars in advertising value for his sponsors.

“I don’t know where that came from, I don’t know what happened, I can’t even figure out what I did”, Hamlin said. They still show the highlight.

Tickets for Daytona International Speedway events – including the 75th annual Bike Week motorcycle races at DAYTONA on March 5-12 – can be purchased on-line at www.daytonainternationalspeedway.com or by calling 1-800-PITSHOP.

“It hurts a little bit”, Truex said.

Indeed, Martin (Batesville) lost to Kevin Harvick by 0.020 seconds in 2007.

Joey Logano, the 2015 Daytona 500 victor, finished sixth and was making a push on the outside to get to the front but didn’t have enough help to give him the push he needed.

Although a Chevrolet actually propelled Hamlin to the win, counting Busch’s third-place finish, it wound up being the top-three sweep many expected.

“I knew it was really close”, he said.

Denny Hamlin didn’t have an explanation.

Matt Kenseth led heading into the final lap, but Hamlin got a strong run on the backstretch. Kenseth got a little loose, dinged Hamlin and briefly touched the wall.

With Kenseth out of contention, it was a sprint to the checkered flag and Hamlin, second in 2014 after Dale Earnhardt Jr. passed him on the final lap, erased that disappointment by going one better this time.

The race team is a much bigger operation with more than 500 employees, and it takes more financial support from just an owner to make it happen.

Eventually, he knew he had to make the move to Xfinity in order to get the shot with JGR in Cup.

Overall, Feb. 21 was a great day for some racing. “You can second-guess all day long, the only thing I could have done different was be more aggressive to the line”. “I thought I had it. Just that last couple feet before the line, Denny just creeped out on me. As drivers, we’re scared to invite someone else new into our information and things like that and I think they did a real good job of playing teammates at the right time and hopefully, that’s a relationship we can build on for the rest of the year”. “Congrats to Denny. He beat me by a couple of feet”. “The greatest advice I’ve gotten is that the schedule’s tough but to live in the moment; that this will live with you forever, so enjoy the week”.

The two cars crossed the finish line simultaneously, and it wasn’t until NASCAR made the official call and the television replayed the finish before most people were certain who had won. Safe bet was to stay on the bottom and finish second. We all just kind of worked together and developed a plan and it seemed to work.

Truex handled the loss as well as could be expected.

The best part of this story: Pollax fought through the cancer, finishing her chemotherapy treatments earlier this year. Truex and Pollex have been dating since 2005.

“I’m with Joe [Gibbs]”, Hamlin said. “I remember saying to him, ‘Well, I didn’t win the championship last month'”.

“I figured it was five to go that it was every man for himself”, Busch said. So I went through that emotion. “Up until the All-Star win past year (in Charlotte), I mean, I’ve won my fair share of races in the time I’ve been doing this, but I hadn’t won any big races”. I looked up, saw we won.

“I’m fine though, I’m proud of what we did”. I’m just ecstatic to have the race team I have, to have my life going the way it is.

Kenseth was temporarily separated from the group when he had trouble getting out of his pit stall as Regan Smith was pulling into the stall right in front of him during a lap 119 caution.