Denny Hamlin focused on avoiding 'bonehead' mistakes at Martinsville

— -- MARTINSVILLE, Va. -- Denny Hamlin considers himself a favorite to win Sunday at Martinsville Speedway. He owns five grandfather clocks, the iconic trophy for the event, to justify such confidence.

His biggest competition? The 2015 defending winner of the STP 500 starts with himself.

Last November, a speeding penalty on lap 53 sent him to the rear of the field and then he proceeded to damage his car while trying to muscle his way to the front. Another speeding penalty with 80 laps to go forced him to stay out on old tires and resulted in a third-place finish on a day where he might have had the best car at the end.

That wasn't the first time Hamlin has ruined a potentially good day at Martinsville by speeding. In October 2012, he started fifth but a speeding penalty on lap 47 -- and another on lap 200 -- resulted in a 33rd-place day.

So it is no wonder that Hamlin has to think he has a good chance to win, as long as he doesn't speed on pit road.

"The bonehead things that I've done -- I've had my penalties in the race where what does it really matter on lap 80 if you gain a spot on pit road since you have so many more laps," Hamlin said. "Luckily, most of my penalties have been early in the race, but still it takes its toll on the car to have to come through the pack multiple times."

Hamlin said he can't just ask for the team to give him a low tachometer reading to shoot for when on pit road. Late in the race, a driver can't afford to be conservative. Teams often pick pit boxes depending on where the timing lines are on pit road, positioning it so they can speed going into or leaving their pit stall because their average time in that zone won't be above the pit-road speed.

"We typically qualify pretty well here, so then we're trying to play with the timing lines on pit road and you can get a bunch, but you can also lose a bunch if you mess up and speed like I have," Hamlin said. "I think that really qualifying good has hurt us.

"It's put us in position to give us the option to go for it on pit road at times when probably backing off would have been smarter."

Not only does Hamlin have five wins at Martinsville, he has 11 top-5s and 16 top-10s in 20 starts. His average finish (8.05) and laps led (1,315) rank second for current drivers behind eight-time Martinsville winner Jimmie Johnson.

But Hamlin's win one year ago is his only Martinsville victory in the past 10 races on the 0.526 paperclip-shaped oval. He appears itching for another one, although he doesn't have to look at his two best tracks -- Martinsville and Richmond -- as ways to make the Chase for the Sprint Cup.

Having won the 2016 Daytona 500, Hamlin knows he's Chase-bound. Martinsville starts a string of tracks that he considers among his best, as Texas, Bristol, Richmond, Talladega and Kansas follow.

"It just makes me hungry," Hamlin said about coming to Martinsville as the Daytona 500 champion. "I look at the next six races and I'm like if I don't win two of them, I'll probably be disappointed. ... We're starting to get really on the same page and getting the cars like I like to drive them.

"I'm pretty optimistic for obvious reasons and I look at this point in the schedule as let's take advantage of getting some wins and getting some bonus points for the first round."

To do that, Hamlin believes he'll need a good collaboration with his teammates. He will let his teammates in on any of the secrets he has at Martinsville and Richmond, even if it's to his detriment. He is the only Gibbs driver to win at Martinsville since Tony Stewart won in April 2006.

"Not keeping one or two things to myself, I feel like has cost me wins," Hamlin said. "I shared some things at Richmond with my teammates and they went out and beat me with them recently in the last few years.

"I just have never been a believer of keeping something under my hat. ... It might have cost me here or there, but probably the information I've got on other tracks has gotten me a win or two, so I think it all evens out."