Hamlin's day at Texas goes up in flames early

Denny Hamlin had an unexpectedly short afternoon Sunday at Texas Motor Speedway when the engine in his Toyota expired and went up in flames.

Hamlin dropped out of the race on lap 75. There were only a handful of laps left in the first stage when the engine blew. The chain of events was quick: Hamlin reported that he thought he was blowing up, the team saw smoke come from the car, and then flames came out of the left side of his Joe Gibbs Racing machine as he half-spun on his own fluids before bringing the car to a stop.

“I’m not really sure,” Hamlin said of the engine issues each manufacturer has experienced this season. “I’ve had blown engines in two or three seasons in a row now, where we didn’t have any issues several years prior to that. Just trying to develop, I'm guessing, and trying to get more. Certainly, we feel like we need to get a bit more power, but this was unexpected for us.”

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Hamlin was running in the middle of the pack when the incident occurred. The team lost track position because of a miscommunication when coming to pit road under a lap 21 caution. Because the radio communication was garbled, Hamlin did not initially know what the pit call was, and had to ask a second time as the field came through Turn 3. It again was not clearly communicated, sounding as if multiple channels had been keyed, and when it was finally on the third try, and he heard the code word cowboy, Hamlin stayed out.

Unfortunately, he was the only driver who stayed on track. Hamlin came to pit road before the race restarted, but was running outside the top 20.

The engine failure then came with little warning.

“It was blowing up for about a lap or so before it really detonated,” Hamlin said. “I tried to keep it off to keep it from fully detonating, that way they can diagnose exactly what happened to it. It’s tough to say exactly what it is, but they’ll go back and look at it, and we’ll find out in a few weeks.”