Kevin Harvick supplied a considerate and sympathetic tackle Denny Hamlin’s newest championship disappointment throughout this week’s Kevin Harvick’s Comfortable Hour. He spent a while reflecting on the load Hamlin carried into Phoenix, and the hype that surrounded his title bid.
“Whenever you have a look at the Hamlin championship story and every part that went with that, I felt dangerous for him this time,” Harvick mentioned, analyzing the highest tales of the season. “The way in which that they dominated the race and the way in which that their automobiles ran, the story together with his dad and simply, you recognize — I believe we noticed it with William Byron at Martinsville, with the stress that’s on these guys.
“I believe, in Denny’s state of affairs, figuring out that the clock is ticking, asserting when his final yr shall be, his dad’s well being, the efficiency of the automobiles — I imply, that was a tricky, robust second for Denny Hamlin to lose that championship. You noticed it on his face after the race.”
Alas, Hamlin entered the Championship 4 with arguably one of the best automobile within the subject and an opportunity to lastly erase years of heartbreak. As a substitute, the veteran watched one other alternative slip away, persevering with a storyline that’s grow to be certainly one of NASCAR’s most talked-about droughts.
Harvick, who himself captured his lone title in 2014 after a number of close to misses, empathized with the emotional and psychological grind Hamlin faces every season. Past the efficiency on monitor, Harvick mentioned the pre-race narrative might need added pointless weight.
“What was attention-grabbing to me earlier than that race is all of the, all of the get on the bandwagon practice speak and simply all of the hype that they promoted earlier than the race,” he continued. “I might have needed to nix that. I’m a agency believer in karma. I’m so cautious about stuff like that as a result of I simply — I don’t ever prefer to beat that drum earlier than. I don’t know. It was sort of unusual. He put a variety of stress on himself.”
Regardless, it’s a second of empathy from certainly one of Hamlin’s long-time rivals, one which underscores simply how a lot the emotional toll of chasing a primary championship can take. Even for a driver as assured as Hamlin, Harvick’s feedback counsel that the exterior noise might have performed simply as massive a job in his newest heartbreak as something that occurred on the monitor.
