(UPDATE) -- Denny Hamlin finished fourth on Sunday to move from 12th to 9th in the Chase standings heading into the Bank of America 500 at Lowes Motorspeedway this weekend. With the success of first and second ranked Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson, Hamlin knows his championship hopes are fading. "For all realistic purposes we're out of it. We had a great run, but we didn't gain, we didn't lose on the leaders," said Hamlin.

Hamlin has had a string of bad outings over the last month or so. "We couldn't go one week without having a pit road incident, or bad luck, or flat tires, or something on the race track, or blown motors."

His destiny in the Chase depends only partially on his ability to generate some good luck. "We stopped the bleeding and now to try and get some blood back in us we've got to have days where the 24 and 48 have days like we had a few weeks ago."