eNASCAR Talladega Recap: Denny Hamlin finished 39th in Sunday’s virtual NASCAR race at Talladega Superspeedway following damage early and late-race technical difficulties eliminated him from contention in the iRacing Pro Invitational Series race won by Alex Bowman. Hamlin started 36th in the #11 FedEx “Delivering Strength” Toyota paint scheme and had planned to ride around at the back of the field to avoid early wrecks. However, he made side-by-side contact with teammate Erik Jones early in the race to cause some damage. He fixed the damage under the race’s first caution and restarted at the back of the field. However, shortly after the restart, Hamlin was spun on the back straightaway to get additional damage, losing a lap to the leaders. Hamlin’s simulator monitor went dark with 20 laps to go during green flag run, and he pulled off the track and was eliminated from the race.
eNASCAR Dover Preview: The eNASCAR Finish Line 150 at virtual Dover International Speedway will be the sixth event in the eNASCAR Pro Invitational Series, providing fans with virtual racing while at-track competition is on hiatus. After a disappointing finish at Talladega due to early damage and late technical difficulties, Hamlin looks ahead to the simulated “Monster Mile” in hopes of retuning his FedEx Toyota to virtual Victory Lane.
FedEx “Delivering Strength” Paint Scheme: The #11 FedEx Toyota will sport a special paint scheme for the Dover eNASCAR race, carrying the message “Delivering Strength” on the hood and #fedexstrong on the back of the car. FedEx wishes to draw attention to not just its 475,000 FedEx team members, but all the organizations FedEx is working with during the COVID-19 crisis, including nonprofit organizations, the healthcare community and FedEx customers.
Hamlin Conversation – Virtual Dover:
Can virtual Dover be easier to conquer than real Dover?
“I’ve had my struggles at Dover in my career. It’s definitely not my best track. But we can win anywhere, including Dover. I’ll try to get some extra practice laps in to see if we can give the ‘Monster’ a good battle. We’d certainly like to get the attention for our FedEx ‘Delivering Strength’ Toyota, giving out a shout-out to not just the nearly half a million FedEx team members working hard right now, but also the nonprofits, healthcare workers and FedEx customers, all working together during the pandemic.”
What changes will you need to make in hopes of a different result at Dover?
“Talladega was a mess of a race. We got damage early, lost our track position, got spun and then had technical issues with my monitors to take us out. My daughter accidentally turned them off during the race at the end. We’ll make sure that doesn’t happen again.”
