NASCAR: Denny Hamlin bounces back in Martivinsville

After two weeks of frustration Denny Hamlin made a strong comeback with a win in his home state of Virginia at Martinsville.

He was also able to avenge the memory of the spring race where, after dominating at the paper clip shaped one-half mile (.847km) track he was shoved out of the way by Johnson with 16 laps to go. This time he held off Johnson for his third win of the year. Juan Pablo Montoya finished third.

“It’s good to bounce back, the last two weeks are in the past, Hamlin said
adding “the 48 (Johnson) didn’t do anything he shouldn’t have and gave us respect.”

Hamlin led a race high 205-laps, but, had to worry through four restarts in the last 58 laps. On each restart he blasted off ahead of Johnson’s Chevrolet and, on the ultimate green-white-checkered flag one it was the same story.

Jimmie Johnson acknowledged that Hamlin had the best car today and couldn’t close up to do a repeat of the spring race “if I felt like I had a car to win the race I would have been up there." He wasn’t too disappointed he extended his points lead to 118 over Mark Martin who finished eighth.

Hamlin redeemed himself after crashing in California and losing an engine last week in Charlotte.

Montoya, also bounced back after a disastrous weekend in Charlotte with a strong third place. He battled with Jeff Gordon throughout the race “everytime I'm around him (Gordon) he runs the hell out of me and moves me out of the way"

When asked if the championship was Johnson’s already, he responded -
"Do we want to beat them? Yeah, we want to beat them. It's not over...there's still a lot of racing to go."

Kyle Busch, Hamlin’s teammate was fourth.

Jeff Gordon, who finished fifth is 150 points out of the lead commented on Montoya,“he’s an aggressive driver. I thought I did something to make him mad I tried to race him as clean as I could.”

Tony Stewart finished 10th and is 196 points behind and Montoya is close at 200 points back.

Although he won earlier this year in another home state track, in Richmond, Virginia, Hamlin thought this one was just a little better.

"It feels great," he said. "This is the best we've been. It's just a shame the Chase is going so bad."