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Denny Hamlin kicked off the 2016 Sprint Cup season exactly where you want to be -- in Victory Lane.

Hamlin notched a win in the Sprint Unlimited Saturday night from Daytona International Speedway. The win is Hamlin's third in the season opening exhibition race which puts him in the company of champions. Only Tony Stewart, Kevin Harvick, Dale Earnhardt, Sr., and Dale Jarrett have won the exhibition race more in their careers than Hamlin.

The 35-year old Virginia native led 39 laps but admits racing at the super speedways like many other thing is all about having the help of your teammates.
 
"I've gotten better at speedway racing over the last few years and really learned a lot from my teammates," Hamlin said. "But realistically you can go back and look at this race a million times, and had my teammates not stuck with me at the right times, we wouldn't have been able to stay up front. Similar to Kyle's championship last year, we all felt like it was a team championship, and we all played our part in it. I think tonight was no different. Without my teammates, I wouldn't be up here, and it's just a great team win from my standpoint. What it is about this race that we've had success at, I don't know, but the last time we did win this, we had a great Speedweeks in 2014 and finished second in the 500."

The win for Hamlin is also important because it is his first race with rookie crew chief Mike Wheeler atop the pit box. Wheeler believes he learned a few things which he can translate over to next Sunday's Daytona 500.

"I learned how far we can go on, with caution laps on fuel." Wheeler said. "I was nervous for a while. We got so many different opportunities to get cautions and save some fuel that it definitely stretched our mileage way farther than I thought we could do, so that was a good learning experience. Everything else is just a good night of racing for us. The car was pretty well balanced, had no real complaints. You could definitely make up some track position if you needed to, and I was pretty happy with the outcome."

Joey Logano took home the runner-up spot followed by Paul Menard, Kyle Larson and Casey Mears rounding out the top-five.

The race, like most at Daytona and Talladega, was marred by a series of "big ones", a term used for crashes collecting multiple drivers. Brian Vickers, who is substituting for the injured Tony Stewart in the No. 14 Mobil-1 Chevrolet, began the nights wrecks 23 laps into the race after his left rear tire went flat. Vickers' car was sent spinning into Kevin Harvick which collected Clint Bowyer and Dale Earnhardt, Jr., among others.

"I knew quite well what happened," Vickers said. "I felt the tire going down, going down the frontstretch probably at the start-finish line. I tried to get out of it but when we're three wide and people are pushing me from behind there's only so much you can do."

The biggest "big one" of the night came with just two laps to go when Carl Edwards appeared to make contact with the front of Brad Keselowski while the two were battling for position. This wreck took out several drivers including reigning Sprint Cup champion Kyle Busch.

The wreck with two laps to go would not be the last of the night's wrecks, however. On the first attempt at overtime last year's Sprint Unlimited winner Matt Kenseth appeared to get loose and make contact with a host of fellow competitors. 

Hamlin, who took the checkered flag under the yellow because of this caution, is just happy he was out in front of all the chaos and believes it's always the best seat in the house.

"Well, it's the best position to be in, but there were a lot of times where I just couldn't hold off the cars that were coming," Hamlin said. "They came with a run that was so significant that I just had to pick, 'Okay, I'm going to end up being side by side, so figure out whether I wanted to be on the top or the bottom, and a lot of that is a split-second decision based off of who's behind them.' So I knew whoever was pushing them was going to stay with them. I had to look at fourth place when those cars were coming to see whether I wanted to be behind that person or the person that was third, and so I always made sure -- I did damage control when guys did get up beside me and made sure that I put myself in the lane that I felt the most comfortable the person behind me was going to give me the shove."