Denny Hamlin: Wheel-hop crash ‘a little embarrassing’
Denny Hamlin got his fifth Martinsville win in the spring of 2015. He wasn’t getting his sixth Sunday.
Hamlin had one of the fastest cars at the beginning of the race but wheel-hopped his car entering turn 1. As Hamlin slid up the track he couldn’t keep his car off the wall and slammed into the outside barrier.
“It’s my first time ever doing it here, so it’s a little embarrassing,” Hamlin said of wheel-hopping his car. “But I mean we were the fastest car those last 30 laps and we got back to the top-five and I was making up a lot of my speed on entry. As the tires wear, the rears get hotter, less grip, you can’t brake at the same amount and I just – it was really out of the blue. I didn’t ever have a hint of it up until that moment, so a bit of a rookie move on my part – been around here too much to do something like that, but learning for the fall and I’m really encouraged about how good our car came up through the pack and I really thought we had a car that could win.”
Wheel-hopping is when a car’s rear wheels lock up under braking (it can happen when a car has too much rear brake). As the rear wheels stop spinning, the rear of the car can hop off the ground. At that point, a driver has very little control of the car and can simply be along for the ride.
Since winning the Daytona 500 to open 2016, Hamlin has been on a bit of a roller coaster. He finished 16th and 19th at Atlanta and Las Vegas before finishing third at Phoenix and California in the previous two races.
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Nick Bromberg is the editor of From The Marbles on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
