Granted, they wanted the 2013 season to end. But they also had not accomplished any of their goals. They salvaged something out of the disappointing year Sunday as Hamlin won the season-ending Ford EcoBoost 400 at Homestead-Miami Speedway.
Hamlin had made the Chase and won a race in each of his first seven Sprint Cup seasons. He was battling for the win in March at Auto Club Speedway when an accident with rival Joey Logano resulted in a compression fracture in his lower back.
The Joe Gibbs Racing driver missed the next four races and never found his groove when he returned.
“It's a horrible year,” Hamlin said after the win Sunday. “I was going to be counting down the laps.
“You hate to say you give up, but you kind of concede the fact that we weren't going to keep the streak alive of a win every year. … As bad as the year is, we can take a little solace in this finish, spend these next two months regrouping, getting our team back in order.”
Hamlin passed Dale Earnhardt Jr. with 24 laps remaining and cruised to the win. While he had been running experimental setups and engines periodically over the last 14 races, Hamlin said he didn’t believe there was anything experimental in his car Sunday and the team used what worked at a Homestead test session two weeks ago.
“We needed to end the season on a good note, so we went with what we knew was proven on the engine side (and) obviously stuck with the setup that we came up with here a few weeks ago.”
EARNHARDT CLOSE AGAIN
Dale Earnhardt Jr. didn’t win a race in 2013, but it was hard for him to be disappointed with the way he ended the season Sunday at Homestead-Miami Speedway
Earnhardt finished third to cap a season when he posted five top-five finishes in the final eight races and eight top-10s in the final nine.
A blown engine to open the Chase ruined any championship hopes, but Earnhardt wound up fifth in the standings with 10 top-five and 22 top-10 finishes.
“These last nine races have been something else,” Earnhardt said after his best points finish since he was fifth in 2006. “I feel good about it. … This has been one of the best years I've had, certainly the best year I've had working with Hendrick.”
Not winning certainly will bother Earnhardt when he looks back on 2013. Wins during the regular season earn the top-10 drivers three bonus points for each win for the Chase, which might have given his team more confidence that it could rally from the 35th-place finish at Chicago to open the Chase.
“I don’t know what would have happened if we could have done Chicago over, but we ran so good in the other nine races, we’ve just got to be real proud of ourselves,” Earnhardt said.
“We’ve got nothing to be disappointed about. We’ve gotten better each year, and that’s what we’re supposed to do.”
The Hendrick Motorsports driver nearly got the win Sunday as he was leading before Denny Hamlin passed him with 24 laps remaining. Hamlin’s Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Matt Kenseth also made it by Earnhardt.
“I just couldn’t get by them,” said Earnhardt, who led 28 laps. “We were all using the top of the racetrack and that’s where we all needed to be. I couldn’t work the bottom, couldn’t make passes on the bottom at all.”
MENARD INVOLVED IN SCARY FIRE
Paul Menard tried to get his damaged and burning car in for repairs Sunday, with flames boiling out the right rear of his Sprint Cup car.
What happened next was dangerous and stunning. With Menard in the car, crewmen standing by and firemen ready to douse flames, the right rear tire and wheel blew up, creating a big fireball on pit road.
"It was pretty wild," Menard said in a TV interview. "I don't know what happened on that restart ... but rubber must have gotten wrapped around the axle, I guess."
Menard was involved in an accident on Lap 194 when the field checked up and he got hit by another car. A tire went flat a few laps later, bringing out a caution flag on Lap 206.
"We pitted a couple of times to try to get the rubber off. We couldn't get it all and I guess it just caught fire," Menard said. "I didn't really know it until there was a little bit of a spark coming into the car and landed on my window net.
"I thought that was weird and about a lap later, I lost my brakes, and then the damn wheel blew right off."
MARTIN PRAISED BEFORE FINAL RACE
The greatest driver to never win a NASCAR championship is treating the season finale Sunday as if it's the last race of his career.
Mark Martin has no plans to race beyond Sunday's finale at Homestead. If he follows through, it will end a career that began with his 1981 Cup debut and covered 40 victories and five runnerup finishes in the championship standings. Martin also won 49 Nationwide Series races.
"For nearly 40 years I have measured myself against the best stock car drivers of the era," he tweeted early Sunday. "It's been #1HellOfaRide."
Martin was flooded with praise on Twitter from fellow drivers. Jeff Burton called him an "intense competitor with an equal amount of values. Made entire sport better through his actions," and Joey Logano said he was his favorite driver as a kid.
Three-time Indianapolis 500 winner Dario Franchitti, who spent half a season in NASCAR, paid his respects from Scotland, calling Martin in a tweet "a total legend and one on the best people I've ever met."
Martin has not used the word retirement in discussing his future plans, but he said he's turned down every driving offer brought to him for 2014 and just needs some time away right now.
"I'm kind of tired. I might not make the best decisions right now," he said. "I'll still have an opportunity to satisfy my competitive fire and still be able to be involved in the sport at whatever level I want to be. And we'll let that kind of materialize as we move forward past Homestead."
Contributors: Bob Pockrass, Jeff Owens, Ray Slover, The Associated Press
PHOTOS: Ford EcoBoost 400 gallery
