SPARTA, KY – A few weeks ago, Denny Hamlin was critical of NASCAR for being called for an uncontrolled tire penalty at the Chicagoland Speedway. Hamlin, says that while the rulebook is correct in that call on him, it’s a rule that needs changed.

See, Hamlin’s Goodyear tire was sitting idle. It wasn’t outside of his pit box. The problem was, it was barely out of reach of one of his crewmembers which resulted in a penalty that left him with a 15th place finish.

Last weekend in Daytona he was involved in that Lap 118 Big One and finished 26th. Hamlin, headed to the Kentucky Speedway just wanting some luck. He finished 16th in last year’s race and 15th in 2016. He had two top 10 finishes in his last six Kentucky starts too – albeit both in the top five.

But, Hamlin hasn’t scored a top five finish since Sonoma, his only top five in the last nine races. His best finish since his Texas win in early April has been fifth (three times) heading into Saturday night’s Quaker State 400.

Well, he earned another fifth place finish in his No. 11 Toyota on Saturday, his sixth of 2019. While he certainly would like to finish better than fifth, he’s just glad to have one this weekend.

See, Hamlin had yet another uncontrolled tire penalty in the second stage. That dropped him from the top 10 to 22nd, one lap down. The Virginia native would rebound to a fifth place finish in the race, which was good for where it could have been.

He took fuel only on his final stop and it paid dividends for his 11th top 10 result of the season. Now, Hamlin heads to New Hampshire where he had seven straight top 15 finishes.

“We definitely had a fast car – a car that was fast enough to run up there with those guys, but obviously going to the back of the pack there with 80 (laps) to go was detrimental to try to win the race,” Hamlin said on his fifth place finish on Saturday night. “We had to make a call with no tires there and we didn’t gain track position. We had worse tires than everyone around us and still was able to come up to fifth, so pretty happy with that effort. We have fast cars every week. As long as we have a clean race, we have chances to win and we just can’t have the penalties that we have and wrecks that we’ve had. It’s just a combination of things where we’re really, really close.”