Denny Hamlin - Pit Road Interview NASCAR Cup Series Championship Race from Phoenix Raceway

1. A piece of debris changed everything. How close were you to getting this done?

DENNY HAMLIN: Yeah, certainly I really liked where we were at with about 25 to go. We were just exceptional in the long run, which wasn't too surprising, but started running the 19 back down there and got within a couple car lengths and obviously that debris caution changed a lot.

Special congrats to Larson and his team. Those guys, any time you can win 10 races in a year, you're absolutely a deserving champion. They did a great job on the last pit stop and got him out there, and it was just set sail after that.

Proud of my team. Really great effort adjusting on the car all day, getting it so much better, and thank our partners in Toyota, FedEx, Coca-Cola, Jordan Brand. Just a really good year. A really, really good year, and things just didn't pan out.

We needed that thing to go green those last 25 laps, and it didn't.