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With a margin of victory that was both historic and microscopic, Denny Hamlin claimed the 58th running of the Daytona 500 by barely the nose of his racecar.
In a true photo finish, Hamlin took Sunday’s race by 0.01 of a second, the narrowest margin ever in the 500, beating Martin Truex Jr. to the checkered flag in a side-by-side thriller in which several of the lead cars jostled and jockeyed wildly for position.
“I don’t know what happened,” Hamlin said afterward, moments after climbing out of his No. 11 Toyota Camry to a victory in his 11th Daytona 500. “I can’t figure it out. It’s the pinnacle of my career, for sure. There is no better feeling than I have right now. I didn’t know we had won, but I knew it was close.”
Hamlin waited until the last lap, and Turn 4, before making a bold racing move. Finding a gap, he briefly went three wide coming out of the turn, creating some bumping and jostling, before pulling alongside Truex in a pedal-to-the-metal race to the finish.
“When I saw a gap open, you have to fill it,” Hamlin said.
Truex, who recently wrote for Derek Jeter’s website, The Players’ Tribune, about his girlfriend’s battle with ovarian cancer, took a magnanimous view of losing his sport’s premier event in such a heartbreaking way.
“I think the only thing I should have done different was being a little more aggressive coming to the line, holding Denny up the racetrack,” he said. “That last split second, when he pulled off my door, that was it. It gave him a couple of inches to beat me to the line. If I had been rubbing him up the track a little earlier on, I think we would’ve been O.K. It’s hard to make those split-second decisions. I felt like I had the momentum, and I did till those last couple feet. So, you know, live and learn. I think if I get in that position again, I’ll do it a little bit differently.”
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