Dennis Hamlin returned from a tumultuous offseason by scoring an eventful top 5 finish in the Cookout Clash at Bowman Gray Stadium on Wednesday night.
Like much of the field, it wasn’t pretty, and Hamlin survived the chaos better than his peers more than anything else, but it was a top 5 finish. He did it in his first race this season in which he will have to begin rehabbing an injured, surgically repaired shoulder until the end of the season in November.
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All things considered, it went well.
“The rust was real, especially on the first 160, but as it started to dry out we started to improve,” Hamlin told Motorsport.com after the race. “I was like a monkey fucking a football for the first part of that race in the wet, but I started to improve, but it was a good warm-up overall – just a decent warm-up and now it’s time to focus on the season.”
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His crew chief, Chris Gayle, says he has complete confidence Hamlin will be in the headspace to compete at the highest level.
“Oh, sure,” Gayle said Motorsport.com. “I think he’ll get there one hundred percent. I have the utmost confidence that it will happen. Obviously, yeah, he’s had an extremely rocky offseason, right? It’s just remarkable the things he’s had to endure and go through.
“So I think it’s just going to take a while to get there, right? The Clash, I think for all of us, we’ve knocked the rust off a little bit. You sit for three months, and it’s a unique format, it’s hard to completely get back to where you need to be in an event.”
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The ups and downs for Hamlin are well documented as he endured a tough championship race in November at Phoenix, but had a successful outcome in his lawsuit against NASCAR on behalf of 23XI Racing alongside Front Row Motorsports, but then lost his father in a house fire in December.
Gayle says he made himself available to Hamlin but also trusts him to do what he needed to do last month.
“Yeah, honestly, I let him do what he wants and reach out when he needs to, send a text here or there, but I don’t get too involved,” Gayle added. “I send a text here or there, but I don’t participate in it. And you know, the few conversations we’ve had, is if you need or want to talk, we can but we keep it professional.
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“We’ve mostly been doing our own things and that’s OK. Now as we get back on track and we go through some things it might change a little bit, but I let him handle his own things and he’s mature enough to handle them.”
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