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CONCORD, N.C. — Denny Hamlin once again found himself in the middle of controversy at the end of the race on Sunday.
Except this time, it was more for what he didn’t do, rather than what he did do.
At the end of the elimination race on the Charlotte Motor Speedway road course, Hamlin passed Ross Chastain on the final lap, a pass that put Joey Logano ahead of Chastain for the final spot in the NASCAR Cup Series semifinal round.
Chastain tried to knock Hamlin out of the way in the final turn, resulting in both spinning and coming across the finish line backward. Logano passed both of them to solidify his spot in the next round.
Ross Chastain (L) and Denny Hamlin talk after the NASCAR Cup Series Bank of America ROVAL 400 at Charlotte. <!–>
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“Desperate people do desperate things,” Logano said. “The playoffs make you question your morals plenty of times. It’s kind of what are you willing to do?
“It was his only shot to go in there and try to move Denny out of the way.”
Amid it all, Hamlin was bewildered. He had no idea what was at stake. And given a choice, he likely would have wanted to keep Chastain in and Logano from advancing, considering the latter is the defending three-time Cup champion.
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Logano will likely run better at the championship race at Phoenix in four weeks.
“I would have made the best decision for me,” Hamlin said. “That’s all I would have said [when asked]. On pace, the 1 [of Chastain] is faster than the 22 [of Logano]. But obviously, if it comes down to the Final Four, the 22 is probably going to have a leg up there.
A wild finish at Charlotte helped Joey Logano (No. 22) advance to the next round of playoffs. <!–>
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“I’m just trying to advance. I didn’t know if I was running 10th or 25th. Listening to the radio the whole time, there was just crickets. Nobody said anything. Nobody told me anything.”
Hamlin said the only thing he tried to do was not wreck Chastain when passing him.
“I was just trying to not wreck the 1,” Hamlin said. “He was fading and obviously walking aggressively. But I didn’t want to get into him or anything like that. I didn’t want any parts of it.
“I wish I had just known what the last-lap scenario was. … I had absolutely no idea.”
Logano struggled throughout the race and pitted three times in the final stage, while Chastain only pitted twice. Logano used the advantage of fresh tires to pass those on older tires, and Chastain lost a couple of spots in the final laps as he struggled on the older tires.
Chastain then tried a move that possibly would have been reviewed by NASCAR officials if it had worked to advance him to the playoffs. But a bump-and-run to advance a position is mostly what the playoff elimination system — a system that possibly could be changed for next year to be a little more forgiving (and arguably more fair) — is designed to create.
“My thought is I’m not taking anything championship-wise away from the 11 [of Hamlin] and if I pass him, he continues right on,” Chastain said. “So I don’t care if it’s kosher or not, I just want to pass the 11. It’s really as simple as that.
Ross Chastain’s playoff run came to an end at Charlotte. <!–>
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“If it was for me and him, I would have to think about that. I knew that it would not affect the 11.”
Chastain felt his move was justified, as he wasn’t impacting whether Hamlin would have advanced. Hamlin, Logano, Ryan Blaney, Chase Elliott, Christopher Bell, Kyle Larson, Chase Briscoe and William Byron advanced to the next round.
Chastain, Bubba Wallace, Tyler Reddick and Austin Cindric were eliminated.
While it will be the last lap that made all the highlights in a race won by Shane van Gisbergen, Chastain can only blame himself for not advancing. He lost 15 spots early in the race when he missed the turn on pit road. He also lost several positions with a speeding penalty in the final stage. And then on the last lap, he slid the car in a turn for Hamlin to get close to him.
“I single-handedly took a car out of the Round of Eight and a chance to go to the [championship] Round of Four,” Chastain said. “In two months, we’ve elevated ourselves from an 18th-place car to an eighth-place car.
“We were good enough to run top five. … It’s all on me.”
Those mistakes kept Logano in it on a day when he struggled so badly that he had to switch gears. Initially, his team was going to match Chastain’s pit strategy and then realized they couldn’t.
“We just try to be smart,” Logano crew chief Paul Wolfe said. “We’ve got a lot of great people working on strategy. … Once we ran the numbers based off our speed throughout the day, it was [an easy decision].”
In the end, Chastain had to watch Logano pass him across the line, which gave Logano a five-point cushion (Logano owned the tiebreaker) for the final spot.
“I knew [by then],” Chastain said. “I watched him go by.”
Hamlin had no problem with Chastain’s move at the end.
“I just was cutting along the last corner,” Hamlin said. “To be honest, my spotter didn’t even say he’s closing in quickly. I just got spun and didn’t know what the hell was going on.
“And so I don’t know how far he came back from.”
And Logano? It was a stressful day for him but he still has a shot at the title.
“The playoffs create drama,” Logano said. “It creates storylines. It creates awesome moments like that. I don’t understand what people don’t like about it.
“I really don’t get it. And if you’re one of those people that say the regular season doesn’t matter and playoff points don’t matter, one point would have been the difference there.”
And not just the difference in this race. It could make the difference on who wins the title.
“We’re a dangerous team,” Logano said. “Anything can happen with us. We’re just a bunch of scrappers.”
Bob Pockrass covers NASCAR and INDYCAR for FOX Sports. He has spent decades covering motorsports, including over 30 Daytona 500s, with stints at ESPN, Sporting News, NASCAR Scene magazine and The (Daytona Beach) News-Journal. Follow him on Twitter @bobpockrass.
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