Denny Hamlin did everything right — well, almost everything — but stretching his fuel for the final 89 laps was beyond the capabilities of the No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota.
Forced to pit from the lead with nine laps left in Sunday’s race, Hamlin, the pole winner, finished eighth and lost nine points to the series lead, now held by Keselowski.
“It’s so frustrating,” said Hamlin, who ran in the top three all afternoon before the late pit stop. “It’s like all the hard work you do — it doesn’t pay off. We choose to have the horsepower over the fuel mileage, and some guys don’t tune that way. When you have a race-winning car, you don’t want to give up any of the horsepower.
“It’s frustrating. They’re not going to beat us on the track — that’s just plain and simple. We’re just too fast right now, and I feel like everything is going well. These strategy games, and the way these cautions are falling, it’s ill-timed. These cautions fly when some people can and some people can’t make it. It’s messing everything up.
“We need to improve our fuel mileage — we know that — and we’ll work on that as much as anything. For me, I’m not too discouraged, because we ran our ass off today.”
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