Hamlin maintains Chase lead

Denny Hamlin remained in the lead of the Sprint Cup series playoff following a strong second-place finish on Sunday's Chase opener at Loudon.

The 29-year-old, who led the standings for the first time in his career heading into the start of the title battle this weekend, drove a great race of recovery after being turned around more than halfway through the race by title contender Carl Edwards.

The Roush Fenway racer made contact with Hamlin's Toyota, sending him into a spin on lap 213 of 300, but the Joe Gibbs racer managed to avoid hitting the wall, while being lucky of not getting collected by other cars, as he was running in the top-five at the time.

"I was really glad we just didn't get plowed by the entire field," said Hamlin. "Obviously we spun in front the entire field at that point. First thing I asked is how many cars is on the lead lap because I wanted to see how bad our day was going to be

"When we restarted 22nd, I immediately set a goal and said, let's finish top 15 and a few things happen and it was like, crap, let's get a top eight and then top 6, holy cow, we can win this thing. It was one of those days, our car, we just made a heck of a charge at the end."

Hamlin was able to recover from the incident and he quickly made progress while running on a safer fuel strategy than some ahead of him. As the lap-count faded he started to put the pressure on, closing on the leaders who were trying to save enough to make it to the end.

With ten laps remaining he was able to get up to third place, as he continued to shorten the gap to leaders Tony Stewart and Clint Bowyer. In the end, the tank of the Stewart-Haas Chevy of his former Gibbs' teammate ran empty, allowing Bowyer to take the win ahead of Hamlin's #11 Toyota.

"The 33 [Bowyer] had a really good car today, the 1 [McMurray], the 14 [Stewart]," said Bowyer. "Those three cars I felt like were the best cars all day. We never really got to show where our car was at. As soon as we got to the Top 3, is when we got spun.

"We clawed and scratched our way to the front all day to get in position with 80 to go to go for a win. Luckily, it's a double-edged sword, it made us come in [the pits], we had to get fuel and it gave us the fuel for the end. Typically, our Toyota gets really good gas mileage, so I knew we were going to be fine on fuel right there at the end.

"Top 6 was where I wanted to leave this day, and so first mission accomplished."

Following Sunday's race Hamlin edges Sunday's winner Bowyer by 35 points in the Chase standing.

Hamlin: Johnson still the favourite

Chase leader Denny Hamlin believes reigning champion Jimmie Johnson is still the favourite to win this year's NASCAR Sprint Cup Series title.

The Joe Gibbs Racing driver won the final event heading into the championship play-off, which was his sixth victory of the year, and beat Johnson to the top spot of the standings for the deciding final 10 races.

Last year Hamlin was one of the strongest drivers in the Chase, taking top three finishes - including two wins - in six out of the 10 events. However two engine failures and a crash caused him three non-finishes that ruined his chances of contending for the title in the season finale.

Despite the likes of four-time champion Jeff Gordon picking the 29-year-old as favourite to beat Johnson, Hamlin does not think he is the target rivals will be aiming at from Sunday at Loudon.

"The #48 [Johnson] is definitely the favourite, with the #29 [Kevin Harvick] right behind him, in my eyes," said Hamlin. "One has shown the consistency to win the championship this year and the other has shown that when it comes to game time, he is ready to play. In my eyes, we haven't won one yet. We're 0-for-4, so it's time for us to step up."

However Hamlin does not deny that this season is probably his best chance ever to win his first NASCAR title. Besides Johnson, Hamlin is the only driver who has been in the Chase in every championship he has entered since the format was implemented.

"We set up our team at the beginning of the year to bring out our best race cars in September and late August and we've done that," said Hamlin. "The last three weeks, and including this week, our car has speed, and that goes a long way. It makes the drivers look good. It makes everything look good because you've executed a game plan and I feel like we've done that.

"The wins in the first part of the season, to me, were almost flukey in the sense that we didn't expect it and circumstances worked out and we won a bunch of races. But, we didn't have our best stuff at the race track.

"This is the point where we see where we stack up with our competition over the next few weeks and from what I've seen over the last couple of weeks, it looks like our stuff is going to be pretty competitive."

Hamlin, who was affected by an injured knee due to a torn ligament at the beginning of the year, has shown great speed at all kinds of tracks this season, taking wins on both short and intermediate ovals.

Two of his six wins this year came at Martinsville and Fontana, tracks that he will visit once again during the Chase. He also dominated at Atlanta two weeks ago until an engine failure put him out of the race.

"I think the biggest thing is we're competitive everywhere, competitive as in we can win races anywhere," Hamlin said. "We've shown we can win races and that means we've been up front a lot during the course of this season.

"For as many wins as we've had, we've had second and third-place finishes as well. That means we've been up front a lot during the season and that's what it's going to take to win the championship - a low average finish and making sure you have everything in line and prepared in case something does happen.

"Even if you have a bad race or two, if you consistently run in the top two to three positions every week and put yourself out there to possibly win a lot of races, I think you'll be a contender."

Hamlin's best finish in the Sprint Cup came in his rookie season, when he was third in the final standings.

Martin sent to rear of field

Mark Martin will drop to the rear of the field for Sunday's Sprint Cup series race at Dover after issues were found with a rear shock absorber on his car during post-qualifying inspection.

The NASCAR veteran had qualified third on Friday afternoon but officials found the gas pressure on the right rear damper of his #5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevy exceeded the maximum allowed by the rules.

As a consequence, the starting order changes, Martin Truex Jr moving into third, with everyone behind Truex also moving up one spot except 43rd-placed Michael McDowell, while Martin will see the green flag wave from 42nd on the starting grid.

After being the runner-up in the championship last year, Martin missed this year's playoff and is currently 17th in the drivers' standings.

No additional penalties will be handed to Martin and his team for the rules infringement.

Stewart laments losing Loudon win

Tony Stewart lamented losing a likely win in the Chase opener at Loudon this weekend as he ran out of fuel right before taking the white flag.

The two-time Sprint Cup series champion took the lead early into Sunday's race and despite dropping in the order following his first pitstop, he was able to get back to the front and eventually lead the race again in the deciding stages.

After staying on the track when many pitted during the sixth of eight caution periods, Stewart briefly lost the lead to Earnhardt Ganassi's Jamie McMurray, re-passing him with 52 laps remaining, then pulling away while try to save enough fuel to make it to the finish.

But despite being on the same pit sequence as eventual winner Clint Bowyer, his car ran out of fuel on the penultimate lap at the exit of turn four, just a few seconds after Bowyer's RCR teammate Jeff Burton, also on the same strategy, suffered a similar blow.

"I'm not happy, that's for sure, but we went down swinging," said Stewart. "It's hard to lose one that way but at the same time it was fun racing Clint like that. He was definitely the fastest car and congratulations to those guys.

"It's a tough way to start the Chase but I'm proud of my guys. Darian [Grubb, crew chief] kept swinging at it all day and finally on that last set of tires we got it halfway decent."

Stewart said that had he known he was so marginal on his fuel mileage he would have accepted finishing second behind Bowyer, but unfortunately the numbers didn't meet the targets on his team's calculations, ending around a mile short of scoring his second win of the year.

"I would have settled for second," accepted Stewart. "If you knew exactly how much gas you have it would be different, but you never know. It's part of the sport, always has been. It's what makes it exciting when you never know until the last lap what's going to happen

"...[Clint Bowyer] had a great car all day. He did a good job of saving fuel and I didn't do a good job."

A victory on Sunday would have placed Stewart up in second place in the Chase standings, but his 24th place finish meant he dropped five places in the playoff down to eleventh, only ahead of Roush Fenway's Matt Kenseth.

But despite a 124-point deficit to leader Denny Hamlin, Stewart says it's still too early in the playoff to give up on his title hopes.

"There is so much that can happen in nine races," said Stewart. "I promise you this: This team is not going to give up. We'll do the best we can and give it our best shot."

Sunday's result has been Stewart's worst for a Chase opener since he missed the playoff in 2006.

Hamlin maintains Chase lead

Denny Hamlin remained in the lead of the Sprint Cup series playoff following a strong second-place finish on Sunday's Chase opener at Loudon.

The 29-year-old, who led the standings for the first time in his career heading into the start of the title battle this weekend, drove a great race of recovery after being turned around more than halfway through the race by title contender Carl Edwards.

The Roush Fenway racer made contact with Hamlin's Toyota, sending him into a spin on lap 213 of 300, but the Joe Gibbs racer managed to avoid hitting the wall, while being lucky of not getting collected by other cars, as he was running in the top-five at the time.

"I was really glad we just didn't get plowed by the entire field," said Hamlin. "Obviously we spun in front the entire field at that point. First thing I asked is how many cars is on the lead lap because I wanted to see how bad our day was going to be

"When we restarted 22nd, I immediately set a goal and said, let's finish top 15 and a few things happen and it was like, crap, let's get a top eight and then top 6, holy cow, we can win this thing. It was one of those days, our car, we just made a heck of a charge at the end."

Hamlin was able to recover from the incident and he quickly made progress while running on a safer fuel strategy than some ahead of him. As the lap-count faded he started to put the pressure on, closing on the leaders who were trying to save enough to make it to the end.

With ten laps remaining he was able to get up to third place, as he continued to shorten the gap to leaders Tony Stewart and Clint Bowyer. In the end, the tank of the Stewart-Haas Chevy of his former Gibbs' teammate ran empty, allowing Bowyer to take the win ahead of Hamlin's #11 Toyota.

"The 33 [Bowyer] had a really good car today, the 1 [McMurray], the 14 [Stewart]," said Bowyer. "Those three cars I felt like were the best cars all day. We never really got to show where our car was at. As soon as we got to the Top 3, is when we got spun.

"We clawed and scratched our way to the front all day to get in position with 80 to go to go for a win. Luckily, it's a double-edged sword, it made us come in [the pits], we had to get fuel and it gave us the fuel for the end. Typically, our Toyota gets really good gas mileage, so I knew we were going to be fine on fuel right there at the end.

"Top 6 was where I wanted to leave this day, and so first mission accomplished."

Following Sunday's race Hamlin edges Sunday's winner Bowyer by 35 points in the Chase standing.

Hamlin unflustered by Harvick feud

Denny Hamlin says he is not letting Kevin Harvick play mind games with him following their clash on Saturday during NASCAR Cup practice at Dover.

Hamlin and Harvick clashed on track then confronted each other in the garage on Friday, but Hamlin says the altercation was unnecessary for both as they ended up losing nearly half of the second practice session of the weekend while repairs were made to their cars.

He believes Harvick was reacting to what he said on Friday about the penalties given to his team-mate Clint Bowyer, but does not regret speaking his mind.

"I think it was a lot of frustrated team members and that's going to be part of it," said Hamlin "Of course it's unnecessary because it didn't help either one of the race teams - us having to work on race cars or anything like that.

"I spoke my mind yesterday and I felt like I said a lot of truth. A lot of times that's not popular with the teams that are involved. It's something that I've always done, to speak my mind, and it's not always in my best interest to do that.

"The thing is now that we just move on. We get our car fixed. We're getting some of our speed back and now the goal is to move on."

Hamlin said that before the practice session started he was warned by Harvick's crew, one member of the #29 team wishing him 'good luck' before he rolled out of the garage. But he didn't elaborate on what was said between Harvick, him and their teams' crew members.

"There was a lot of cursing," said Hamlin. "That's all that there really was being said. There was nothing really logical being said inside with the two teams. Nothing's ever going to come of it.

"I had a hint. Their crew guys, they stare and make a couple comments right before. He [Kevin Harvick] got into me on pit road even before we left the track so I knew we were going to have to deal with some issues.

"It's unnecessary that the team guys have to get involved in it, but we're just going to keep focused on winning a championship."

Hamlin was defiant ahead of Sunday's race, where he believes he has more speed that his Richard Childress Racing rivals. During the final practice session of the weekend, Hamlin was seventh fastest, with Harvick 15th, Bowyer second and their RCR team-mate Jeff Burton third.

Hamlin claims what happened on Saturday won't distract either him or his team from their focus on winning this year's Cup title, as he believes Harvick is simply trying to dent him mentally.

"Our job is still to win the championship and we look pretty good on speed, especially compared to those guys," said Hamlin. "I think we're going to be okay.

"We have to just stay focused. That's the biggest thing to me, those guys play those games and they've been in the sport a long time and they know how to play these games and get into someone's head that's beating you right now. I think that was just a small effort on their part."

While Hamlin will see the green flag wave from fourth on the grid on Sunday, Harvick will start the second race of the championship playoff back in 34th.

Q and A with Mattias Ekstrom

Two-time DTM champion Mattias Ekstrom is making his oval debut this weekend at Richmond International Raceway in what will be just his second outing in the NASCAR Sprint Cup series.

While others before him have taken their first steps in stock car racing at lower levels, including Juan Pablo Montoya, the 32-year-old Swede has taken the bull by the horns and will race Saturday at the 0.75-mile oval in the final race before the Chase for the Cup kicks off.

AUTOSPORT spoke to the two-time winner of the Race of Champions ahead of his second NASCAR race.

Q. Why are you going straight into the Sprint Cup and not trying at a lower level before, like others have done in the past?

Mattias Ekstrom: I think it doesn't really matter wherever you start, if you start in Cup or Nationwide. Sure, if you start lower you have less competition but there's good guys at every level in any NASCAR series. I mean, look at Kyle Busch, he's driving in all of them and besides, Red Bull only has a team in Cup. I had to do this with Red Bull because I've been an athlete for them for many years and that's about how it was.

Q. So you think it's easier to make the transition from DTM to NASCAR than from an open-wheel car?

ME: For me I think it's easier to adapt to NASCAR because I've been used to touring cars. Open-wheel cars have never been my cup of tea and I've never been good at it, so for sure I'm better off trying to do this than maybe going to IndyCars, that's for sure.

Q. What moved you to do this for a second time?

ME: What I like the most is the racing. You have many competitive cars and many competitive teams and DTM is also competitive but you have only 20 cars and then you have to drive with a lot of respect for your team-mates. Here there's 43 cars and you've got to be good because if not, you're going to be way down. The competition is what really attracts me and I really enjoy that.

Q. Are you seriously considering a future in NASCAR? Are more races in the cards this year?

ME: I came here and did the race at Sonoma and said afterwards that I'd like to do an oval. What happens in the future nobody knows, but one thing is for sure, I will try to collect all the experience I can this weekend and I will do the best job I can and then we will see what happens. At the moment I have a contract with Audi which I'm happy for and I really enjoy the DTM and there are some races to go this year, but I decided I wanted to try this.

Q. You've spent some time with Montoya in your NASCAR visits. Is he trying to sell you into making the move full time?

ME: I don't call him Juan, but Sean. I liked his style when he was doing F1 and I've spent some time with him. He's a nice guy and very competitive. He's been giving me all the info, what I should think of, all the pros and cons. I appreciate all the help I got from him because without that I would be struggling a lot more. I also got some help from Jimmie Johnson and you need to have some friends in this world when you come as a rookie in order to survive. I think what is really important is to do this with a lot of passion.

Q. With four races remaining in the DTM and ranking fifth in points, what's your outlook on the rest of the season?

ME: The championship is out of my hands now and I can't win it by my own performance, it would have to be the others doing something bad. I'm going there to enjoy every race, to try to win more races and what happens with the championship I can't really control anyway. We will see.