Google News
Denny Hamlin had something to say after qualifying second at Phoenix Raceway. He believes that the teams will have slightly weaker results this season, given the failures they will face “Honestly, we haven’t even talked about it as a team — about points or anything like that,” Hamlin said, as quoted by racer “I mentioned before the season started that I think everyone’s average finish is going to go down three or four points in general, just because I think there will be more mechanical failures, more wrecks, things like that”.
Hamlin expects a good season, though, and believes there is no need to panic "I think it’ll be easier to come out of a hole this year simply because as we’ve seen, everyone has had trouble, where it seemed like we were so honed in on the old car that my average finish just kept dropping every single year lower and lower,” said Hamlin.
“I think you have a year where you can be 10th or 11th (on average), you’re going to be up front — as long as you get reasonable stage points — and you’re going to be contending for a regular-season championship.
“We’re not panicked simply because we have had some bad luck. Obviously, Daytona was not our doing. Last week was my doing. But I’m confident. I’m really actually happy where our team is and where it is progressing week to week”.
Phoenix expectations
He and his team seem to have high expectations of Phoenix, and Hamlin wants to achieve a result that will be a turning point this season “This is an important race,” Hamlin said. “Even though it’s certainly early in the season, it’s still kind of the first real short track we are going to." "It’s going to create a big data point that we can go to when we start setting up our cars for other racetracks.
So, it’s very, very important." "A good solid day this weekend certainly would help us believe and give us confidence that we’re going to be good pretty much at all the racetracks. “I thought at Las Vegas we had one of the best, if not the best car and that’s a mile-and-a-half.
We’ve got a boatload of them. We’ve got a lot of short tracks; if we can be good here, then I like our outlook for the whole year”.