Denny Hamlin, Alex Bowman leave Pocono with much-needed top fives

LONG POND, Pa. — Denny Hamlin finally saw a result that matched his team’s speed, while Alex Bowman followed up his Chicago Street Race win with another top-five finish.

Neither driver could catch Ryan Blaney for the victory at Pocono Raceway on Sunday, but both found positives in their performances for different reasons.

Hamlin piloted the No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota to a second-place finish in the Great American Getaway 400, his first top-10 finish since placing second at World Wide Technology Raceway on June 2.

“We were in such a terrible slump,” Hamlin told NBC Sports. “Our finishes were terrible for a month and a half, not our performance. It feels good to have at least a solid day leaving here. I only care about winning, but still, this kind of rebound makes you feel a little better.”

Hamlin’s strong finish at Pocono came with guidance over the radio from crew chief Chris Gabehart, who tried to help Hamlin pass Bowman with seven laps to go and give the No. 11 car a chance to chase down Blaney.

“In that instance, I think both of us knew it’s gonna be a hard hill to climb to pass the 48 (Bowman) and the 12 (Blaney) in 20 laps at Pocono,” Gabehart told NASCAR.com. “But there were a couple little technical things I saw that I was just trying to help him with that we’ve been working on at this track. But at some point, you just got to let him go to work and finally, that’s what we did.

“And I’m really proud of him for passing the 48. People don’t realize how hard it is to pass late in the going up front at Pocono. So even passing just one of them was a good feat. We just couldn’t pass two of them.”

Hamlin was in control two weeks prior at Nashville Superspeedway, leading with two laps to go before five overtime attempts thwarted what seemed to be a sure win. In the five races between his top-10 drought, Hamlin finished 38th, 24th, 24th, 12th, and 30th at Sonoma, Iowa, New Hampshire, Nashville, and Chicago, respectively.

To right the ship at Pocono, where Hamlin leads all-time with seven victories, was significant, particularly ahead of the July 21 return of the Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway (Sun., 2:30 p.m. ET, NBC, IMS Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, NBC Sports App).

“Yeah, it’s a big deal to your point,” Gabehart said. “We’ve had a lot of struggles — and everyone does. But with results, we should have quite a few more points in the bucket than we do at this point. So to take a big chunk out of the points lead, have a solid day heading into what, in the 11 car’s opinion, is probably the most important race of the year — the Brickyard at Indy is a big one for us now that it’s back on the oval. To try to get that last major for Denny, carrying a lot of momentum into that race is a big deal.”

Bowman needed a strong performance for a different reason. The No. 48 Hendrick Motorsports team has shown consistent speed all season with 12 top 10s in 21 races and a 13.3 average finish, good for fourth in the NASCAR Cup Series standings.

Following last week’s win at Chicago with another top-five finish — this time, a third-place effort at Pocono — helps build positive momentum with five races remaining in the regular season.

“Definitely good to be stringing races like this together,” Bowman said. “We’re gonna have to do that in the playoffs, so if we can continue to do that throughout the regular season, I think that’s really good for us.”

The strength Bowman’s shown the past two weeks appears to be no fluke, with the No. 48 car displaying speed in Saturday’s practice and qualifying sessions as well.

“I think we did a good job kind of across the board,” Bowman said. “We did a good job all weekend. Got a little behind in traffic on some of those restarts, but yeah, I think our team did a really good job. We had really good pit stops, good strategy, and good calls.”

Ultimately, Bowman lost a spot on the final run to the checkered flag when Hamlin completed the pass on Lap 153, but Bowman believes he made a higher-percentage decision.

“I could have raced the hell out of Denny, for sure,” Bowman said. “And it probably would have brought everybody behind us back to us. And I got really loose. I watched a couple people smoke the fence off (Turn) 3 today and ruin their days and I’m like — I was really, really loose over there and kind of knew that there’s maybe a 20% chance I could have held him off if I made his life super difficult. Probably a 50% chance I would’ve crashed trying to do it, and third is better than crashed.

“So just tried to make a smart call there and obviously hate to lose positions, but, you know, he raced me super clean on the restart and just tried to give him that respect back.”