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Hero to zero

Maybe the No. 11 team's spotter Curtis Markham's hairpiece fell over his eyes as Denny Hamlin rocketed into Elliott Sadler's mangled metal on Lap 18.

Hamlin, winner of Saturday's Heluva Good! 200 Nationwide Series race, was just one of 11 cars collected in a wreck that was triggered when the No. 19 and 38 collided in Turn 2.

"Everyone was going for the same spot," said Hamlin, who retired from the race in 43rd place. "It's so tight off of Turn 2 right there. I came piling in the way late. I had the 43 right on my bumper trying not to get hit from him ... We felt like our car was really good. It was just a complete road block. I had to choose who I was going to hit basically."

Sadler says he didn't know what happened but "all of the sudden (he) got loose." Tony Stewart, however, accepted "100 percent responsibility."

"It's my fault for being anywhere close to Elliott," Stewart said. "If I'm within a half a lap of him, I expect that to happen. It's my fault. I'm the one that hit him. When I hit him, it caused all the guys behind us to wreck. So it's my fault."

Sadler and Hamlin were quick to blame the car. Sadler believes the pile up occurred due to the decreased range of vision in the new car.

"It's so hard to see out of these cars or see through the car in front of you," Sadler said. "I think that's why the people kept piling in and hitting. They didn't have much place to go."

Hamlin said he hit the brakes "immediately" as soon as Markham warned him of the wreck, but the new car doesn't "stop as well as they had in the past."

"The spotter was telling me to slow way down and even stop," said Hamlin, who scored his first DNF since his engine failed at Bristol last August. "But I can't stop any harder than what these brakes will let me."

Hamlin isn't the first driver to complain about the brake package this season. The brakes have become a more integral part of the car due to the weight rising from 3400 pounds on the old model to 3450 pounds with the new car. As NASCAR might say, "It's a work in progress."