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Saturday, 06 June 2009 10:30 |
 When Denny Hamlin first came to the Pocono Raceway in 2006, he put on one heck of a show. The driver of the No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing ride went on to take the pole and clearly had the best car that day, scoring the win. When the series returned to the triangle-shaped track later that year, Hamlin picked up right where he left off, earning the pole and sweeping the year’s events. In six races at Pocono, Hamlin has two wins, two poles, four top-5s and five top-10s. Yet, according to Hamlin, his team’s advantage went out the window with the implementation of the CoT.
“Our advantage here really ended when we had the Car of Tomorrow come here,” Hamlin explained. “We felt like we had a real strong hold on this race track with the old car. We ran it in 2007 as well, but we just didn’t get any of those victories – one because the rain shortened it while we were on pit road. It just seems like with the Car of Tomorrow we’ve had about a third-place care here every time.” During Saturday’s final practice session, Hamlin showed he is getting used to the new car on this track by putting his No. 11 FedEx Ground Toyota atop the leaderboard in the weekend’s final practice session for the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series. Running a total of twenty-nine laps, Hamlin posted his fastest time of 54.441 seconds at 165.317 mph on his second circuit around the track.  Stewart-Haas Racing’s Ryan Newman continued to show his strength, putting his No. 39 second on the speed charts for the second time of the day. Newman ran a total of twenty-one laps with his best a lap of 54.475 seconds at a speed of 165.213 mph.
Roush Fenway Racing’s Greg Biffle was third-fastest in the weekend’s final session, followed by Clint Bowyer and Jimmie Johnson. Tony Stewart was sixth-fastest in his back-up car.  MORE NASCAR NEWS
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