Richmond native Hamlin pursues his personal Chase

RICHMOND, Va. -- With 10 laps remaining Saturday night, the friends and family assembled behind the No. 11 pit box rocked nervously on their feet, remembering how many times they had been this close before. With five laps remaining, they gripped their radios tightly and exchanged smiles that were equal parts hopeful and anxious. With one lap remaining, they began to embrace and applaud. Nothing would deny them this time. This time, it was theirs.

Press Pass

Denny Hamlin talks about his first win at his home track and his hopes for the Chase.

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• Hamlin vistis SPEED
• Victory Lane celebration
• Final Laps: Sweet win

Over the radio, a tired, emotional voice croaked a single word from the driver's seat. "Unbelievable," Denny Hamlin said.

It was Chase cutoff night once again at Richmond International Raceway, that one evening each September when tensions run high, when seasons are at stake, and when the spotlight shines brightest on not who wins the race, but who winds up 12th in the standings. It's one of two days on the NASCAR calendar -- the other being the championship-crowning finale at Homestead -- where the victor seems almost incidental, lost in the relief or the jubilation experienced by someone else.

Yet don't tell that to the 60 or so members of the Hamlin clan gathered under the lights, who jammed into Victory Lane and smiled and celebrated as if their man had just won the Sprint Cup title.

Forget the playoffs, forget the scenarios, forget all the mathematical formulas and probabilities that preceded Saturday night. For the No. 11 team, an island of normalcy in a sea of Chase mania, none of that mattered. Hamlin had clinched his position in the NASCAR postseason a week earlier at Atlanta.

At Richmond, there was only one goal -- to finish some business on a race track that had eluded the kid who grew up down the road in Midlothian. After cutting a tire and finishing 24th in a 2008 race where he led 381 laps, after fading to 14th this past spring in another event where he led 148, winning on the .75-mile layout had become Hamlin's personal Chase.

"This is our Daytona," Hamlin's mother, Mary Lou Hamlin, said in a Victory Lane soaked by champagne. "So we're very excited. He's come so close before, and he was so disappointed with that race where he led every lap and it ended up not happening. It made this one even sweeter." (Continued)