Denny Hamlin explains what led to his hard impact in Turn 3 during practice at Martinsville ahead of Sunday's Round of 8 finale.
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00:00Walk us through the moments that led to that crash in practice, Denny.
00:10The moments that led up to it, our car was phenomenal.
00:12It was doing everything it needed to do.
00:15We just made a change and then went back out to kind of assess the change and thought it
00:20was kind of right where it needed to be.
00:23And then what happened as you're exiting turn two here?
00:27I don't know.
00:28The car didn't slow down.
00:29The throttle hung on me and apparently Chris sent me a picture and there's a huge chunk
00:35of rubber that's in the throttle body that hung it wide open.
00:39You went immediately into self-preservation mode.
00:41What's that like, keeping the nose out of the wall and just putting the back end in?
00:45Yeah, I mean, I try to do everything I can to not, you know, hit head on.
00:50But at that point, I'm just trying everything I can to keep the thing spun around so then
00:56I can try to maybe get the car to slide forward instead of backwards.
01:01But obviously, this small track and whatnot, you just can't, it's hard to keep it off the
01:05wall here.
01:06What kind of fast hands and feet did you have to have to do that?
01:08How did you do that?
01:09I mean, most of it is instinctual.
01:12It's not a lot of it is just kind of you're thinking the best way to wreck.
01:16But obviously, from my standpoint, just trying to make sure I didn't hit nose first.
01:21So I did everything I could.
01:23So just to go back a little bit, we're saying your team pours over this car to make sure
01:27everything is right.
01:28Everything was right.
01:29And Chris now says it was probably the rubber buildup that comes off the tires, which it's
01:32supposed to do to give you guys a better tire, that probably got into the throttle body?
01:36Yeah.
01:37Just, you know, we drew the unlucky straw.
01:40And you know, it's been a story for 20 years.
01:42And so it's so disappointing considering, you know, the preparation the team puts in
01:48to bring me a fast car.
01:51And I hate this for the team.
01:52I got to work all hours of the night.
01:54It's unfair to them.
01:55But, you know, just unlucky.
01:58Then you've won here five times, three times in the playoff era.
02:02You've won elimination races.
02:04Can you do it Sunday from the back?
02:05Yeah, I mean, I hope so.
02:07I think that if the car has got the ability to maneuver like this one did, then you got
02:14a chance.
02:16You know, the unfortunate part is, you know, we don't get to pick a pit stall.
02:19We're probably going to be right in the middle of a terrible spot on pit road.
02:23Track position is key here.
02:27The road is, you know, got infinitely harder.
02:30But it's not impossible.
02:31500 laps to try to get it done Sunday.
02:33Glad Denny's okay after all that leak.