Denny Hamlin reveals 'defining moment' that gave Christopher Bell win at Homestead-Miami

Denny Hamlin recognized there are many moments that define a race, but one stood above the rest when Christopher Bell won at Homestead-Miami.

Hamlin’s Joe Gibbs Racing teammate locked himself into the Championship 4 for the second consecutive season with a win over the weekend. It wasn’t a dominant performance, but it was enough to move Bell to the final round.

Thinking over the race, Hamlin stated his belief that the caution where Kyle Larson slammed into the pit road water barrels changed everything, as it helped Bell gained numerous spots due to green-flag pit stops, and put him in position to win at Homestead.

“So what that did is it actually, since that wreck happened in the middle of that green-flag cycle, it put some cars a lap down that then needed to take a wave around. This is where I believe [Martin] Truex [Jr.] and a handful of others, this was the defining moment for the No. 20 car, and why he won. He went from being in the teens, and really the back-half of the teens for the most part. He gained, I’m going to estimate, eight positions or so, right off the bat. As soon as that caution came out,” Hamlin delineated, via his Actions Detrimental podcast. “Because now, since he stayed on the racetrack, and hadn’t already pit, he gained all the positions of the people that did pit. So this is all the other guys. So that put him, I believe, tenth? Or maybe it was sixth. I’m not really sure. But it moved him up to the front. It was the moment. He wasn’t getting there the other way. He had tried all race. He was on the struggle bus. But the moment he got that caution, he was far enough forward to where the clean air woke his car up. He was ten times better at the end of that race than what he was the entire race.

“Now, a lot of things were a factor. The conditions were changing, as well. They made their car better. There’s a lot of factors in it. But that was the defining moment for a lot of people’s race, is that caution coming out.”

Regardless of how it went down, Christopher Bell is on to the Championship 4. Denny Hamlin will be hoping to join him there, but time will tell how it goes for him this weekend at Martinsville.