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 On Friday at the Brickyard, the air decided to punch back.
As Hamlin was running his first lap in the second of three practice
sessions at the famed 2.5-mile track, the site of Sunday's Crown
Royal presents the Jeff Kyle 400 at the Brickyard (3:30 p.m. ET on
NBCSN), the hood of his No. 11 Toyota flew up and back, crashing
into the windshield and breaking into pieces.
Hamlin drove his wounded car to the garage, where crew chief Dave
Rogers and the No. 11 team repaired the hood in time for Hamlin to
return to the track less than an hour into the session.
Hamlin speculated that the hood was inadvertently left unpinned, but
he wasn't certain about the cause of the mishap.
"(The hood pins) were probably hanging, I would say," Hamlin said.
"It wasn't on TV, so I'm just assuming they were probably out. You
know the speeds we were going, when that hood comes up, it just
disintegrates and blows. The good thing is it didn't all stay
together. The hood blew apart so much that I had a gap there (where)
I could see."
Hamlin also was worried about other potential damage to the car.
"The roof is what we're most concerned about," Hamlin said. "It blew
the roof apart a lot and did some damage inside the car. It's just a
lot of force there that tears up a lot of stuff any time the hood
comes up."
The incident didn't slow Hamlin's car appreciably.
After topping the speed chart at 182.208 mph in the opening
practice, Hamlin was 12th quickest after returning to the track in
the second session, running 179.968 mph in warmer temperatures.
LOGANO WANTS TO WIN ONE FOR THE BOSS
Joey Logano would like nothing better than to fill the one glaring
hole on Roger Penske's resume as a team owner.
Penske has won a championship in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series (2012
with driver Brad Keselowski). Team Penske driver Will Power is the
reigning IndyCar Series champion.
Penske has 16 Indianapolis 500 trophies in his showcase. Keselowski
won the NASCAR XFINITY Series race at the Brickyard in 2012.
But the victory Penske now covets most is a Brickyard 400 win at
Indianapolis. The boss has made that abundantly clear to both his
Sprint Cup Series drivers, and their next opportunity comes Sunday
at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
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"Any time we hear Indy coming up, we start getting the calls from
Roger," Logano said. "We really want to win this race. This is the
one on his bucket list that he hasn't gotten yet, and we talk about
it a lot. It would be very special to give him a Brickyard 400,
along with the Indy 500 he won earlier this year and the Daytona 500
we won earlier, too."
In fact, Logano gave Penske his second victory in the Great American
Race in February, and a victory Sunday at Indy would be doubly
sweet.
The last driver to win both the Daytona 500 and Brickyard 400 in the
same season was Jamie McMurray, who did it in 2010 while driving for
Chip Ganassi, Penske's archrival in both the NASCAR and IndyCar
garages.
BRUTAL START TO BRICKYARD WEEKEND FOR TIMMY HILL
The No. 98 Ford driven by Timmy Hill had a multitude of issues
Friday in Sprint Cup practice. In the second session, a 35-pound
tungsten weight fell off the car. NASCAR typically takes a dim view
of ballast that is not secured properly.
The sanctioning body confiscated the jettisoned weight and will
address the matter in next week's competition meeting.
In Happy Hour, Hill's Ford spun off Turn 4 and slammed nose-first
into the inside wall, forcing his team to go to a backup car. As a
tow truck was removing Hill's car from the track, the back of the
car scraped the track, knocking off the rear extension.
Hill didn't participate in the opening practice session. In
hindsight, he might have been better off skipping them all.
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