Denny Hamlin’s Winning “Squeeze” Explained NASCAR Inside the Race

Squeezes through. So how does that work? A little blip of brake. A little chop of the gas. And that gets his speed perfect, where he squeezes between the 35 and the 9. This week in the lab, we'll show you how the fastest car on track drives completely through the field after a penalty on pit road. What makes a car good? What makes a car fast? Let's go to the SMT data. This is Hamlin chasing down Chase Elliott. We're in round lap 152. Chase is running in the 7th position. The 11 gets a run off the top, as you would imagine. Here's where it really starts. First of all, you see how Denny can get all the way to the back bumper, even on the inside of the 9 car. Most cars, there's an arrow wall kind of right here at the rear bumper. Your run kind of stops. You actually start pushing the car away. When you look at the 11 car, his straight line speed alone lets him get to the inside of the 9. And then here's where the 11 is just magical. He drives down in the corner, and then he can accelerate, which that's the difference. So if we take a second and we look exactly mid-corner, we're going to back this up right here. We have the 11 inside the 9. Now the 11 is trying to exit in this direction. He knows he has to get on the gas to get in front of and clear the 9. So if we go back and we look at the data, the orange line is Denny Hamlin. He goes down in the corner, and then he jumps in the gas. At the same time, if you look at steering, he actually can unwind the wheel, meaning that when he picks up the throttle, the car actually follows the white line normally. When your rear tires go from coasting to drive, it drives the car tight, straight, up off the white line, not the case for the 11. So he clears the 9 off the corner. It's just not that simple, though. So now he's in the 7th position, but look ahead. All of this traffic he's going to run into when he's down in 3 and 4. So now when the 11 goes down into turn 3, he runs the top. Now this is where experience is going to take over, right? So if we pause it right here, Denny Hamlin wants to take the top of the line. He wants to be up here, but he is concerned that this whole traffic is moving up. He also, remember, has to protect from the guy he just passed, right? So here is Chase Elliott. He wants to fill that hole on the bottom, kind of blocking the 11 in. So the 11 has to gas it up, and then this squeeze is so good. I'm going to let you watch it. Squeezes, threads the needle. Let's take another look at that. Squeezes through. So how does that work? Well, if you go back to the data and we stop it, check this out. A little blip of brake. A little chop of the gas. And that gets his speed perfect, where he squeezes between the 35 and the 9. If you think it was close in the data, let's ride on board and take a look from both the 11 and the 9. That was a great example of what the 11 could do passing the 9, but there's another good example. This is Chris Buscher in the 17. RFK was having an amazing race in Las Vegas. Good speed for the 17. Not quite as simple. This time, Denny Hamlin, much like when he tried to pass Chase Elliott, drives to the inside. The difference is, we pause it here. The 17 knows what's coming. So look at the throttle trace of the blue. That is the 17. He jumps in the gas right here, and then it's basically flat. Why does he do it? Check this out. He gases up. He pins the 11. Now, the 11 can't drive all the way out to the wall, and basically this stalls the 11. Now, if we pause right here, this is basically game over for every other car in the field. The 11's still faster, but this would take 2 or 3 laps to reset this pass. He would have to go back, regain kind of composure, cool his tires, and then go back on the offensive, because at this point, he is in the bad position, being side-drafted by the 17. Now we're going to go down to the 3 and 4, and this is where the 11 stands out. He drives to the bottom. He jumps in the gas. So look at this right here. If we look at the 2 throttle traces, the blue is the 17. So the 17, rolling to the top, comes in, gets in the gas sooner. But it doesn't matter, because the 11 is driving so good. Look at this throttle trace. It's like a toggle switch. It is straight up. He jumps in the throttle, and what that allows is for him to drive up in front of the 17. So now a pass that should have taken 4 or 5 laps to kind of rekindle and retry it again, the 11 just finished the pass at the other end of the racetrack. That's how you take a car from outside the top 20 and drive it all the way back into contention. Denny Hamlin has now dominated stage 1, speeding, went to the back, recovered from the back. He's now taking control of the race. But the one thing that's clear for the 11, if there's one weakness, it's on the long run. The last green flag run of the race at Las Vegas was the longest run of the race. Both he knows it as a leader, and both the chaser, Chase Elliott, knows it as a second-place car. So as we jump on board, we're going to watch basically from lap 261, the last handful of laps, Chase Elliott has taken a 1.5-second advantage down to 1 second at this moment. So if we just pause it right here and just remind everybody what we're looking at, we have kind of following along Chase Elliott. Up in front, though, see if I can make it, Denny Hamlin is the second car. So it's Chase Elliott, lap car, Denny Hamlin. So as we continue to play this forward, Chase gets it down to 1 second. And what you really need to keep focusing on is the corner exits. So these are the throttle traces on corner exits. As Denny's car goes away, both with older tires and right now in traffic, he has to be very patient, almost vigilant not to overdrive the exit, because he knows from earlier in the race if you make a mistake on exit and lose your momentum, that's how William Byron passed him earlier. So at this point, he feels like he has control of the race. He's really, really focusing on those exits. The other thing to watch is look how much easier lap traffic is for Chase Elliott. He easily drives by the first car. Next car in line, the car between Denny Hamlin and Chase Elliott, is now the 88 of Connor Zilich, a fellow Chevrolet driver, a rookie in the field. He's not going to be rude to the 9. So watch how easily the 88 lets the 9 have on the corner exit. So now, as we look right here, we have about 4 laps to go. Denny Hamlin has a clear mirror full of the 9. He knows he has what is now a 3 quarter of a second lead. So now for Denny Hamlin, it is all about not making a major mistake. So you look right here. It looks messy, but I will tell you that if you just clean it up, Denny Hamlin picks up the throttle here, and while it basically goes up and down a little bit, it's one fellow move. There's no big corrections in the throttle. That would kill his momentum. So this is a veteran being a veteran. I really believe a younger driver driving the 11 car, between the pressure of trying to win, the pressure of the 9 closing in, it would be easy to make a catastrophic. And what I mean by catastrophic isn't wrecking the car, but a mistake on corner exit. Right there, Denny misses the bottom. This was pointed out by Clint Boyer on Fox. He said he can't continue to miss the bottom. The other thing to notice is Denny's using very little brake. You see the little blue squiggly line? That's Chase Elliott using some brake to get the car slowed down. Denny Hamlin using very little. As we close in on 3 to go, remember he missed the bottom in 1 and 2 last time there. Watch the corner exit this time. Denny's going to actually lift earlier into the corner, right? Watch this right here. He rolls out nice and nice and easy down into the corner. Stays off the throttle. Picks up the throttle one time. He does it on both ends. Picks up the throttle. And as he does this lap after lap after lap, he basically holds the 9 car to about a 3 quarter of a second gap. He knows that margin right there can't be overtaken in one lap. He parks the 9 back there just where he wants to have it. And he uses his experience and expertise to not make a mistake on corner exit where it could potentially cost him the race. Another great way to look at this is you just look at all the laps. Time after time after time and just continue to focus right here. What you're going to see is that the 9 car is better. He gets in the gas sooner. And while there's a lot of noise on the orange line, I'll pause it right here. You see all this noise right here? It could be messy, but what it doesn't do is get all the way down to 0. Remember, 0 throttle is right here. That's where he is in the corner. So the worst he gets to is 50% throttle. Even Chase Elliott has a little moment right here where he gets to 50% throttle. As long as he doesn't have to get completely out of the gas on corner exit, that's going to be everything that the 11 car needs to do. It's great if we go back. Let me go back to the last lap and pause right here. This is the funniest thing ever. Once a driver knows he has it won, he drives down into turn 3. He gets to this point right here. And then you watch on corner exit. It's one time. He doesn't even worry about beating the 9 back to the gas because he knows if he doesn't make a mistake. And the other thing worth pointing out is look at all the brake pressure from the 9. He drove down in the corner as far as possible for one last gas to try to get to the 11. But in the end, the best car won the race. Easier said than done. It was a challenge for Denny Hamlin. He dominated early, made a mistake, worked his way through traffic, which some cars could do, but nobody with the efficiency of Denny Hamlin and then tested with the longest green flag run of the day. It's a reason the guy has won 61 times in the Cup Series. The future Hall of Famer, Denny Hamlin, won in Las Vegas.