Sharing knowledge hurts Hamlin at RIR

RICHMOND, Va. | If there’s one thing Denny Hamlin could change, he maybe wouldn’t have been so forthcoming about Richmond International Racing in all those Joe Gibbs Racing team meetings.

But holding out information about his home track would make Hamlin a bad teammate, so he shared everything he knew.

Then Kyle Busch used those tips to beat his teammate Saturday night at Richmond, denying Hamlin a weekend sweep at his home track.

“I learned from Denny last fall, and I’m not going to say what I learned,” Busch said after stretching his final tank of gas 107 laps to pick up his second win of the Sprint Cup season.

It was Busch’s third consecutive win in Richmond’s spring race. Hamlin has won the past two fall races, and the last non-JGR driver to win at Richmond was Jimmie Johnson in September, 2008.

So it was no surprise to see Busch and Hamlin finish first and second for a JGR sweep Saturday night. Hamlin just wished it had been him out front.

“It’s tough when you share notebooks. You know those guys got exactly what you got,” Hamlin said. “Just got beat by my teammate. He drove a great race. I thought he would burn his stuff up. Our cars were dead equal.”

Hamlin, in an early season slump, really needed the strong finish to snap the funk that’s had many wondering if last year’s championship runner-up will challenge for the title again. He got off to a great start by winning his charity race Thursday night at RIR, and followed it with a victory in Friday night’s Nationwide Series race.

While he sat back in the closing laps, waiting to pounce should Busch’s tank run dry, he never regretted giving Busch the information that ultimately beat Hamlin.

“If I don’t tell him the things I know on short tracks, the crew chiefs don’t relay information, it’s not a good team,” he said.

“Yeah, it might cost me a race here or there because he outruns me. In the grand scheme of things, it makes me an overall better driver.”

Kasey Kahne, fresh off surgery to repair a torn ligament in his knee, finished a season-best third to give Toyota the top three spots.

“We weren’t quite good enough as the Gibbs cars, they were really good [Saturday night],” Kahne said. “But it’s still a good run. The guys did a good job, and it’s nice to get a top-five.”

The leaders seemed to have an easy go of it, with most of the fireworks coming far behind them in the field.

Roush Fenway Racing drivers David Ragan and Carl Edwards finished fourth and fifth in Fords, while Clint Bowyer was sixth in a Chevrolet. AJ Allmendinger was seventh and was followed by Johnson, Tony Stewart and Brian Vickers.

But Stewart, despite his top-10 finish, was less than pleased with the performance.

“We have a lot of work to do,” he said. “We [stink] right now. I am embarrassed about how bad our stuff is.”