A seventh-place finish in the Cook Out Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway left perennial Playoff driver Denny Hamlin 43 points above the current elimination line for the Round of 12\u00a0in the NASCAR Cup Series postseason.<\/p>\n
At World Wide Technology Raceway on Sunday, Hamlin hopes to increase that total to facilitate a stress-free run in the following week\u2019s elimination race at Bristol Motor Speedway.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnything 50 or more (points) is a pretty comfortable spot, even if you typically DNF (did not finish),\u201d Hamlin said. \u201cYou have to add in if the people below the cut\u2014are they really legitimate contenders to win a race or not, at Bristol?<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, 50 or more would be fine. Even if it is less than that, it\u2019s fine. We were far less than that last year at Bristol and unfortunately had to run that race a little bit more conservatively because we weren\u2019t in as comfortable of a spot as I was hoping for. So I would like to go to Bristol not having to worry about anything.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hamlin also hopes to be one of a small group of drivers who can race at Bristol without fear of failure. At the opposite end of the spectrum likely will be drivers who must win to advance to the Round of 12.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u201cEveryone\u2019s situation is different,\u201d Hamlin said. \u201cEveryone\u2019s speed is different. Everyone\u2019s ability to win is different, and so I would say that everyone\u2019s mind-set is probably a little different.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think there is probably will be a couple of guys below the cut probably praying something bad happens to the guys in front of them, because that is really their only shot. They are not going to gain that many points to the cut line. You maybe will have one that will have to win, so on and so forth.<\/p>\n
\u201cEveryone\u2019s situation will be a little different. I can only speak for our team, and that we want to go to Bristol with the opportunity to win. I want to be 100 percent. That is the only mind-set, win and who cares if you finish last, and that is probably a unique place that only two or three guys will have at that track.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A seventh-place finish in the Cook Out Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway left perennial Playoff driver Denny Hamlin…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":138732,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[70],"tags":[13089,72097,11050,15757,2092,425,562,67275,2095,2096,99],"class_list":["post-138731","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nascar","tag-bristol-motor-speedway","tag-darlington-raceway","tag-denny-hamlin","tag-group","tag-motor","tag-nascar","tag-series","tag-southern-500","tag-speed","tag-speedway","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138731","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=138731"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138731\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/138732"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}