RICHMOND, Va. — If there’s one thing Denny Hamlin could change, he maybe wouldn’t have been so forthcoming about Richmond International Racing in all those Joe Gibbs Racing team meetings.
But holding out information about his home track would make Hamlin a bad teammate, so he shared everything he knew.
Then Kyle Busch used those tips to beat his teammate Saturday night at Richmond, denying Hamlin a weekend sweep at his home track.
“I learned from Denny last fall, and I’m not going to say what I learned,” Busch said after stretching his final tank of gas 107 laps to pick up his second win of the Sprint Cup season.
It was Busch’s third consecutive win in Richmond’s spring race. Hamlin has won the last two fall races, and the last non-JGR driver to win at Richmond was Jimmie Johnson in September 2008.
So it was no surprise to see Busch and Hamlin finish first and second for a JGR sweep. Hamlin just wished it had been him out front.
“It’s tough when you share notebooks. You know those guys got exactly what you got,” Hamlin said. “Just got beat by my teammate. He drove a great race. I thought he would burn his stuff up. Our cars were dead equal.”
Hamlin, in an early-season slump, really needed the strong finish to snap the funk that’s had many wondering if last year’s championship runner-up would challenge for the title again.
