Don’t expect Chase Elliott vs. Denny Hamlin Round 2 at Martinsville

It was one of the wildest Cup Series races of the 2017 season, featuring a chaotic ending leading to a memorable confrontation between Denny Hamlin and Chase Elliott after the checkered flag waved last fall at Martinsville Speedway.

Neither Hamlin nor Elliott have forgotten what transpired during the semi-final round playoff race last fall, though neither say they’re thinking much about their altercation as NASCAR returns to Martinsville for Sunday’s STP 500 (2 p.m. ET, Fox Sports 1).

Elliott was leading the playoff on the historic half-mile track with only a few laps remaining when Hamlin punted Elliott, sending him up the track and crashing in the outside wall. Had Elliott won the race he would’ve clinched a spot in the four-driver championship finale. Afterward, Elliott expressed his displeasure by running into Hamlin on the cool-down lap, with the two drivers then getting out of their cars and engaging in a heated discussion.

“The ‘could have, would have’ game doesn’t really matter,” Elliott said Saturday. “There was a lot that was laying on that race. It wasn’t just a win; it was a chance to go race for a championship, so that obviously had a lot of implications, but it doesn’t matter. It didn’t happen.”

Hamlin would acknowledge he was overaggressive and apologized for wrecking Elliott, though it did little to subside the hard feelings between the two drivers. Elliott got his revenge two weeks later when he nudged Hamlin up the track and into the wall during a race at ISM Raceway, which cost Hamlin a chance to transfer into the championship final.

Since then, the two have raced each other clean and there have been no further run-ins.

“It was a mistake on my part, and I’ve moved on from it,” Hamlin said. “We both have. We’ve raced each other quite a bit since then.

“It’s part of short-track racing. It was so long ago that my focus has already shifted to this season. I can’t go back, so I’ve got to go forward.”

As Elliott reflects on what occurred last fall he doesn’t focus on the incident with the veteran Hamlin and the resulting fallout. Instead, the third-year driver prefers to remember how well he was running on one of NASCAR’s most challenging tracks and how close he came to his first Cup Series win.

“I try to make myself think about the characteristics and things that our car was doing that made us good,” Elliott said. “… When your cars are good a lot of times I feel like you remember certain things about them, and you just try to think back on the small things that were making the difference, that were allowing us to have the performance we had.

“I can’t turn back time. We all kind of know the implications and the things that could have been, but they weren’t, so no point in really getting caught up in it too much.”