Denny Hamlin looking to recapture early summer speed at Chicago Street Race

Denny Hamlin's summer stretch has been a tale of two halves. 

After a feast-or-famine 10-race stint to open the year, Hamlin won his third race of the season at Dover on April 28 — a result that would be the first of five consecutive top-five efforts for Hamlin and the No. 11 team. 

A fifth-place finish in St. Louis marked the fourth of Hamlin's consecutive top-five finishes. And with it, the veteran driver took the Cup Series points lead, holding it after a runner-up effort the following week in St. Louis. 

Over the last month, however, the summer heat has melted Hamlin's momentum. It started withering away after a lap-two engine failure at Sonoma on June 9. The next week at Iowa, Hamlin and the No. 11 team completely missed on the setup, forcing Hamlin to play catch-up throughout the evening with a racecar that wanted to do everything but make speed. 

Hamlin would've had a third-place finish secured at New Hampshire, but NASCAR's decision to wait out the rain in Loudon ended up relegating Hamlin to a second consecutive 24th-place finish. Hamlin was again fast in Nashville, but late-race chaos took him from the front row to a 12th-place finish. That was the fourth race in a row where the No. 11 car finished outside of the top 10. 

Aside from a hellish night in Newton, Iowa, Hamlin's slump hasn't been for a lack of speed. It has, however, dropped him to third in the regular-season standings and kept him seeking what would be a series-leading fourth victory. 

As unorthodox a course as it is, the 2.2-mile Chicago Street Course could prove to be the track that starts a new, positive streak for Hamlin. While an 11th-place finish in the inaugural Chicago race last year may seem unremarkable, Hamlin won the pole and ran up front early. 

And with every driver having an equal amount of experience at the new course, Sunday's race is anybody's for the taking.