6 days agoDenny Hamlin won Sunday's Cook Out 400 to take his first win at Martinsville Speedway since 2015. His 274 laps led marked the third-most he has ever led at Martinsville, and the most he has led in a win. The race removed all doubts about his ability to win without crew chief Chris Gabehart, as his current crew chief Chris Gayle had never had a top-10 finish at Martinsville before. Although Hamlin first took the lead by staying out of the pits on the fourth caution on Lap 126, he led all but one lap after that when his teammate Christopher Bell passed him on the final restart before Hamlin took the lead on the next lap, eventually winning by 4.617 seconds. With the win, he improved from eighth to sixth in points and probably locked himself into the playoffs.
--Sean Wrona - RotoBallerSource: Racing Reference
1 week agoDenny Hamlin is one of the greats at Martinsville with five career wins and 2,448 laps led, but his last win here came a decade ago in this race. Nonetheless, even though he hasn't won since, he's been no slouch with ten top fives and 1,136 laps led since his last win. It's a rare race at Martinsville where he doesn't lead and his fifth-place starting position is his second-best at Martinsville with the Next Gen chassis, so he'll probably lead in this one. However, he certainly doesn't yet seem to have the killer speed with Chris Gayle that he had with Chris Gabehart and Gayle's record has been pretty dreadful with no top tens and 0 laps led in 12 starts with Erik Jones and Ty Gibbs, so it seems unlikely that Hamlin will have the setup to win. Since he is likely to perform worse than his expectation and his $10,700 DFS salary for this reason, he is probably overvalued.
--Sean Wrona - RotoBallerSource: Racing Reference
2 weeks agoHomestead has always been one of Denny Hamlin's stronger tracks, so it didn't come as much of a surprise that he eventually finished fifth in Sunday's race there, but for a while, it looked like he might finish significantly worse. Hamlin initially started 23rd and fell back as low as 30th in the early laps of Stage 1, but a savvy strategy play to stay out of the pits later during each of the first two stages allowed him to have fresher tires at the end of both stages. It reaped great dividends, as he blasted through the field at the end of both stages, eventually finishing 11th in Stage 1 while making up a massive deficit to Ryan Blaney to win Stage 2. However, he lost the lead to Kyle Larson on the Stage 2 pit stops and would never regain it. His solid run helped erase some doubts as to how Hamlin would run on intermediates without Chris Gabehart as his crew chief.
--Sean Wrona - RotoBallerSource: Racing Reference
2 weeks agoDenny Hamlin has been reliably consistent at Homestead over the years, earning 13 top-10 finishes in 20 starts as well as three wins. He has also led all three Homestead races with the Next Gen chassis and battled Ryan Blaney and his driver Tyler Reddick for the win last year, but now his former crew chief Chris Gabehart has been replaced by Chris Gayle, and Hamlin doesn't seem as fast. On paper, Hamlin should be one of the best options for DFS play since he qualified 23rd and is likely to score many place-differential points in addition to the fact that he leads here often, but the crew-chief change and his mediocre run last week at Las Vegas (where he started 15th, finished 25th, and only had an average running position of 22nd) suggest that he is likely overvalued for this race.
--Sean Wrona - RotoBallerSource: Racing Reference
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