Hamlin, FedEx Racing Team Recover from Lap One Wreck to Finish 28th
Rookie Drops to Sixth in the Chase Standings Heading to Martinsville

CONCORD, NC (October 16, 2006) - Taking the green on Saturday night in the Bank of America 500, Denny Hamlin and the #11 FedEx Racing team looked ahead to 334 laps of racing and a chance to move a very quick #11 FedEx Kinko’s Chevy to the front. Those hopes, however, took an early turn when Hamlin was caught up in a multi-car wreck before he would complete one full circuit of the 1.5-mile track.

With both the #4 and #7 spinning in front of him, Hamlin slowed to avoid the trouble only to suffer heavy contact when the #49 car of Mike Bliss hit him from behind. The blow spun Hamlin and he suffered further contact, this time to the front, when the #72 ran through him. The only option for Hamlin was to drive the #11 directly to the garage.

Once there, the FedEx crew undertook the massive effort of repairing the heavily damaged car, always focused on getting back on the track. Crew chief Mike Ford and car chief Chris Gillin orchestrated a total team effort to repair the heavy damage to the right front and rear end of the car. As the laps counted down on the track, the full crew worked to repair, remove, and replace parts on the #11 machine.

The end result was Hamlin rejoining the race almost 60 laps down and with only attrition offering opportunity to gain spots. Staying on the track and out of further trouble would eventually see Hamlin and team gain thirteen spots and take the checkered flag in 28th - a very good finish considering the start and by no means a fatal blow in their Chase for the Nextel Cup aspirations.

“Not sure there much we could do differently there, I tried to slow up to avoid it, took a pretty big hit there and knew right away we had a lot of damage,” said Hamlin. “We were unlucky to get caught up but the #11 FedEx crew did an incredible job getting me back on the track and with a lot of cars falling out, we did salvage a lot of points. Going out on lap one with that much damage, this night could have been much worse for us.”

With half of the Chase complete, Hamlin currently sits in sixth place, 137 points behind leader Jeff Burton and only 48 points out of third. Next on the schedule is the half-mile bullring at Martinsville Speedway, a track known for close racing and no shortage of contact between the cars. Hamlin has a history at the Virginia track beyond this Nextel Cup and Busch Series experience; he cut his teeth in late-model racing on the track.

“It’s one of those things, you know, we checked up and if he was right on me there was no way he was going to be able to see it. It’s just one of those things, and we’ll chalk it up to bad luck.”

“I hate that I was in the position to get caught up in the first place and it comes down to qualifying. We had a quick car and should have been closer to the front and maybe a little ahead of the trouble.”

“I was hoping that we had left bad luck in Talladega but I guess it followed us here. We’ll fight through this though, we are by no means out of the Chase and we are still going to tracks where we feel we can run really strong. There’s still a lot left in this team.”