One of the most consistent drivers in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series, Denny Hamlin also has some of the worst luck in the garage. Last week at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Hamlin left pit road for the first time under green and wound up with the shifter in his hand. After starting fourteenth, the Joe Gibbs Racing driver’s day was shot as he headed for the garage with a broken drive shaft and wound up finishing 34th.

This poor luck is unfortunately another consistent aspect of Hamlin’s NASCAR career. A front-runner at the Pocono Raceway year-in and year-out, Hamlin once again had the competition talking earlier this year when the series returned to the 2.5-mile triangle-shaped track snuggled in the Pocono Mountains. Starting from the seventh-spot after rain set the field by points, Hamlin’s day was over right from the start, quite literally.

Taking the green flag and roaring down the long front stretch, the fuel pump under the hood of Hamlin’s No. 11 FedEx Toyota decided to quit working. With a broken fuel pump, Hamlin stalled the car after coasting through the first corner and was pushed behind the wall into the garage. The team went to work repairing the broken part, but Hamlin ended the day a much disappointing 38th.

“The mechanical failure took us out of contention right from the start so we worked on making our car better, just as we would have had we been racing for position,” Hamlin said of the July race. “We tried a couple of things beyond what we normally would have, things that maybe were a little more aggressive, but for the most part we ran it like any other race and hoped we could learn something that we could put towards the race this weekend.  We had a good car last time here.  We found some speed in practice and it was shaping up to be a good race for us so to have an issue like that on lap one makes for an extremely frustrating day for everyone on the FedEx team and for everyone in the shop who put long hours into getting those cars ready.”

With another parts failure fresh in his mind, Hamlin is definitely looking for redemption this weekend in Pocono. Prior to the disappointment in Indy, Hamlin had finished in the top-5 in the four of the five prior events. Headed back to arguably his best track, the driver of the No. 11 knows the ups and downs of the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series can do terrible damage to a team’s Chase dreams.

“It’s pretty amazing really, just how tight things are in the Cup Series,” Hamlin explained. “It seems like the guys at the top of the chart have built up a bit of a cushion but from there back it looks like everyone is really going to be in a fight for a place in that Chase.  You can’t ever get too comfortable or too confident.  You never know what is going happen and how it will affect you.  The competition is definitely tight and it shows that there is little room for error.  You need to be good but also really consistent and that’s the balance that gets you into the Chase and gives you a chance at a championship."

Hamlin has no problem at being consistent, now if he can just his equipment to cooperate and last the entire event when he has a car capable of winning the No. 11 team will be a force to be reckoned with.

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