'We tried ... it just didn't work out' Hamlin laments at Talladega

There’s no telling where Denny Hamlin could have cycled out Sunday at Talladega Superspeedway, but he would have liked to have found out had it not been for Ross Chastain.

Going into the final pit cycle, Hamlin was second behind Toyota teammate Ty Gibbs, with more Toyota teammates behind him. The group was the first to hit pit road under green flag conditions, doing so with 25 laps to go. Spire Motorsports teammates Carson Hocevar, Michael McDowell and Justin Haley also pitted with the group.

Hocevar ended up the first one off pit road with Hamlin behind him. It then became a race to slice through slower traffic as the cycle continued, and things were going well until they ran upon Chastain.

In Turn 3, Hocevar was able to squeeze between Chastain and Cody Ware. Hamlin, however, had nowhere to go. The move completely halted the momentum Hamlin and his group had, ending their chances to catch the Ford and Chevrolet drivers ahead of them to blend in and fight for the win.

Hamlin finished 23rd, one spot behind Chastain. Riley Herbst, in a Toyota, finished 24th. The highest finishing Toyota was Bubba Wallace, who made it to 10th place. Tyler Reddick finished 16th, Chase Briscoe was 17th, and Ty Gibbs was 19th, while Erik Jones was 20th in the final running order.

“I didn’t know how far up we were actually going to be able to get, but certainly making a move there to kind of wreck us was not ideal,” Hamlin said. “He’s trying to do everything he can to stop the run. The variance of speed there was crazy.

“Man, we tried. The Toyota group tried to give the fans a show at least. We were the only ones willing to just race this thing out, run wide open, and see what happens, and tried to make a show of it. At the end there, it seems like we didn’t do a good enough job on the cycling — everything worked out fine, but whether it be the pace that we had after we came out, the cycle itself, the amount of fuel we had to put in, whatever it was, we’re about a second off from being at the front. Ultimately, it just didn’t work out.”

Once stuck in the pack, the field becomes gridlocked. The package in the Cup Series in recent years does not allow for many runs to develop or for a driver to pick their way through the field easily — something that Hamlin once excelled at in the Cup Series for multiple victories at Daytona and Talladega.

Hamlin knew his race was over when the momentum was taken away. Hocevar made it the highest in the finishing order of the group that pitted together by finishing eighth.

“There is nowhere you can go,” Hamlin said. “Once you work yourself out of the pit cycle and you’re behind the two-by-two, there is nowhere to go. There’s nowhere to race.”

Hocevar made an aggressive style work for him. Hamlin had a front row seat and was trying to go along for the ride.

“It was hard to see, but I was just committed to his back bumper and trying to make the best lap time I could for our group, and he was a part of our group at that time,” Hamlin said. “My job was just try to go with him with every run he had, but the runs just got stopped by some blocks. That was it.”