“You don’t want to sound too cocky, but I knew what we were capable of,” Hamlin said.

Fast forward a week and the Sprint Cup Series paid a visit to New Hampshire Motor Speedway in Loudon for Sunday’s Sylvania 300.

Hamlin and his No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota team got the NHMS race weekend off to a winning start by putting up the fastest lap in the first practice session on Friday, but Hamlin’s guarantee looked to hit at least a slight snag later that day when his crew missed the tire air pressures on the car, resulting in Hamlin qualifying a lackluster 32nd.

After the poor qualifying run, Hamlin set a goal to make his way into the top-10 of the running order by lap 100 of the 100-lap race.

“It doesn’t hurt to have a little confidence in your team,” Hamlin said.

After drivers including Jeff Gordon and Kyle Busch led the opening laps of the event, Hamlin far exceeded his own expectations. He was not only in the top-10 by lap 100, he was leading the race. Hamlin made his way up to the top-five by lap 59 and took the lead from Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Busch on lap 94.

“These are lightning-fast cars that they’re giving me,” Hamlin said.

Hamlin dominated from there and went on to claim his fifth win of the season and the 100th win all-time for Joe Gibbs Racing.

After Hamlin took the lead from his teammate, Busch ran second for awhile after leading 48 laps. He fell back, though, and out of contention around lap 164 when he reported dropping a cylinder in his No. 18 car.

After Busch fell back, Jimmie Johnson took over as the best of the rest and went on to finish in the second spot. With the second-place finish, Johnson moved into the championship points lead, with a one-point advantage over previous points leader Brad Keselowski, who finished the race in the sixth position.

“We’re the next best car,” Johnson said. “Finished second.”

Johnson wasn’t the only Hendrick Motorsports driver to finish in the top-five. Fellow-HMS drivers Jeff Gordon and Kasey Kahne finished third and fifth. The lone Hendrick driver outside the top-10 of the finishing order was Dale Earnhardt Jr., who finished 13th.

Clint Bowyer finished fourth.

With the win, Hamlin stands third in points, seven points behind new leader Johnson.

– Photo courtesy of Getty Images for NASCAR

– Follow Stock Car Spin on Twitter @SCSblog or like Stock Car Spin on Facebook

– Amanda’s also on Twitter @NASCARexaminer and has a fan/like page on Facebook: NASCAR Examiner

Gordon claimed the pole with a fast lap of 28.232 seconds.

“That was a great lap,” Gordon said. “Started out as kind of a tough day for us in race trim. We were trying some things that weren’t working well for us. We switched over to qualifying trim, and immediately went to second on the board. But even at that, we were quite aways behind the No. 11 (Hamlin).”

Gordon may have felt that he didn’t have much for Hamlin in practice, but a mistake by the No. 11 team in preparation for qualifying resulted in Hamlin winding up 32nd.

“I knew something was wrong. It looked like we just — we ended up having race pressures and we didn’t put our qualifying pressures in, so that was a tough one. I knew something was really, really wrong because we were just — the car was bobbing down real bad — but simple mistake.”

Instead, Hamlin’s Joe Gibbs Racing teammate, Kyle Busch, will start on the front row after turning a 28.265-second lap in qualifying to claim the second starting spot, alongside Gordon.

“That was a pretty good lap from where we were earlier in the day in the M&Ms Camry,” Busch said. “(Crew chief) Dave (Rogers) and the guys did a really good job making good changes to it to make it pick up speed.”

After the provisional pole changed hands several times at the beginning of the qualifying session, Busch went out 29th to claim the temporary spot atop the scoring pylon. He held it throughout much of the remainder of the session until Gordon went out near the end to claim the pole for good.

Tony Stewart and Brian Vickers qualified third and fourth to claim second row starting spots. Carl Edwards was fifth.

Forty-seven drivers made qualifying attempts with hopes of garnering one of the 43 spots on the starting grid. Drivers failing to make the race include Scott Riggs, Jason Leffler, Jeff Green and Josh Wise.

– Photo courtesy of Getty Images for NASCAR

– Follow Stock Car Spin on Twitter @SCSblog or like Stock Car Spin on Facebook

– Amanda’s on Twitter @NASCARexaminer and has a fan/like page on Facebook: NASCAR Examiner