Joe Gibbs: Winning Daytona 500 feels like Super Bowl victory

Twenty-year-old pole-sitter Chase Elliott wrecked on lap 19 to spoil one storybook finish and teammate Dale Earnhardt Jr. wiped out on lap 171 to spoil another. With Junior out, Hamlin became the clear favorite, if he could get his vehicle in clean air.

Matt Kenseth was leading on the final lap when Hamlin made his move.

But on the final lap, Hamlin, running fourth, abandoned the faster low line, moved over a lane and used a drafting boost from Kevin Harvick to make a run on Kenseth, who led 40 of the final 41 laps.

Kenseth tried to block his teammate, Hamlin wedged his auto between Kenseth and Truex, and raced Truex side-by-side to the checkered flag. Jimmie Johnson won the championship that year with seven victories, 15 top-five and 22 top-10 finishes.

After Denny Hamlin won the closest Daytona 500 in history, the owner of Joe Gibbs Racing took a deep breath and reflected on it all.

Now, with a Daytona 500 win, he’s earned his shining moment.

Even though Busch produced a phenomenal comeback in order to win his first-ever Sprint Cup title, he said the challenges he faced didn’t mean he cherished it more than he would have had he claimed it in 2008 when he had his best season. As Kenseth slid back through the field, Hamlin and Truex door-banged their way to the finish line, with Hamlin surging ahead at the last second to get the victory. But, you know, live and learn.

In the end, it doesn’t matter what I say or what NASCAR does, because fans will never fully be happy with the racing product that is taking place on the track. Last year’s 500 victor Joey Logano was sixth, followed by Kyle Larson in seventh, his best showing in the race to date.

After winning the race, Hamlin, signed by J.D. when he was 23, dedicated the victory to him. “This is the biggest win of my life”. That’s what the whole goal of our plan was before the race even started was to give all of us a shot going into the last lap – and we all had a shot.

“If I do win the Daytona 500, I could win 1,000,000 dollars”, he wrote. “I knew it was close”, Hamlin said. I’m going to have a lot more opportunities to win races. “I think the only thing I should have done different was (to have) been a little more aggressive coming to the line holding Denny up the racetrack”. This is competition. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to win. I hate it for everybody at less than 20 laps in and have something dumb like that happen. If I had been rubbing him up the track a little earlier on, I think we would have been OK.

Hamlin’s Joe Gibbs Racing teammates Kyle Busch and Carl Edwards finished third and fifth, respectively. His Chevrolet hit an interior wall and then ricocheted into the grass, where Earnhardt found himself stuck. But for the past year, doctors have searched for answers about the source of the symptoms that impact his speech and processing ability, which some have suggested stemmed from a youth of playing football and racing cars and participating in extreme sports, and the attendant head injuries.

“I’m sure it’s a big part of it”, Truex said.