Toyota Racing – Denny Hamlin
NASCAR Cup Series Quotes
BROOKLYN, Mich (August 17, 2024) – Joe Gibbs Racing driver Denny Hamlin was made available to the media on Saturday prior to practice for the NASCAR Cup Series race at Michigan International Speedway.
DENNY HAMLIN, No. 11 Yahoo Toyota Camry XSE, Joe Gibbs Racing
Is there any possibility that your incident with Austin Dillon was a matter of circumstance?
“No, because Austin (Dillon) made a left-hand turn. After he made contact with the 22 (Joey Logano), he made a left hand turn to correct his course, straightened his course, and then turned left again, so there was two. If you can read the graph, there is a big left, straight, big left again.”
What do you think he’s trying to do?
“I think he’s trying to make contact. I can’t see him, because I have a big right-side headrest, but I know he is kind of coming down. He is able to see me because of the visibility of the window net. You can see when a car is passing you. More than likely, when he is getting told to come down, he is doing what he is told and then when he sees me, he’s probably just trying to make contact, but at that point, I nearly had him cleared. The right rear is just a vulnerable spot and can put you in a bad wreck position.”
How do you fix the system and is it fixed now with this penalty?
“I certainly hope so. I certainly would love to see it called in real time, going forward. I think there is going to be an opportunity, in a few weeks, for NASCAR to perhaps use the bottom series to start to set precedence for us and let people know that they are not going to put up with intentional wrecking for wins. I think there is some incidents that have happened in the past, that if this is a new precedence it could fall under those, I think for instance when I spun out Chase Elliott in 2017. I would deem that as well I know I didn’t intentionally wreck him, I tried to move him out of the way, I intentionally made contact with him. The result does matter, so I think – I watched a CARS Tour race and three times a car got put in the back for spinning. It just is an easy call. It really is an easy call, but you have to give the people in the tower the liberty to do it, and hopefully, we have created a new precedence where if you spin out the leader, and in such an egregious manner, you get to put to the last car on the lead lap or whatever it is going to be. I don’t think it will detour – we don’t really want to stop the contact – you are not going to. We are still going to push the edge to try to get the guy out of the groove to win the race. We are still going to make contact, but it is certainly going to give us pause in those situations where you saw like last weekend where it is not going to be worth it to clear somebody out that was deservingly going to win the race. Which is the fair part of sport of this. I think there is a balance of entertainment and sport that can be had here. It is just a matter of where this is really one that you need to put your foot down and we have to police the sporting aspect of this.”
Are you satisfied with NASCAR’s decision?
“I am. In the moment, you wish – well, if you just take the win, then everything fixes itself then kind of having this split decision, but as I understand it there is some iffy language in the rule book on if can you really go back and take a win at this point. I think in the future you just send whoever it is to the back, and it all fixes itself. You don’t have to worry about Playoff eligibility and stuff like that. Given how much time it took, it was probably the right call.”
So, you are comfortable if they need to add language where they can take wins away in the future?
“Yes. Well, yeah. You are just sending people to the back for rough driving. We have that ruling in the rule book, but you just actually implement the rough driving.”
Did you play basketball with Austin this week or have you spoke?
“He didn’t come. I have not.”
Do you need to?
“I just think – I don’t have anything negative to say about this with Austin (Dillon). I really don’t have anything negative to say about his character. I really stuck up for him quite about earlier in this year, when he was going through some pretty tough finishes and things like that, and talking about how I really respected his character, and I still do. He just was put in a really tough spot, where you have to make a split-second decision, and he made one that was not in the, in my opinion, best interest of the sport. People make mistakes, and I believe everyone deserves second chances.”
How is your shoulder?
“It was just more my whole right side. When you look at how these Next Gen cars take crashes, really the flat side impact is kind of the worst thing you can have because there is no crush there. There is not crush to have there. I would have been better off to nose it head on or back it in, because we have the softer bumpers now. It just happened to work that the total right side – it was very similar to how it felt from the Daytona rain crash, where I was in the lead, tank slapped it and hit it flat on the right side and it hurt my right side in that one as well. It was just a really weird circumstance, and just going 100 mph still can result in a really hard hit.”
Do you think the injury will affect your chance to win the championship?
“No, because I had some internal stuff that needed to be repaired, and now it is repaired, but even though it has been nine months since surgery, rotator cuff can take forever, and I’m not as young as I used to be, so I don’t recover quite as quick as I used to. It is one of those things where last year, I just kept making the injury worse and worse and worse, by continuing to race, this year, it is getting better each week, but weeks like last just take a little bit of week off.”
Did you go to the competition meeting this morning?
“It was not. We ran out of time.”
What do you think about Bristol being a cutoff race and do you think there is a potential for something like this to happen?
“Well, it is always possible, but I think – I’ve said this for quite some time, but if NASCAR just puts their foot down it will really scare us from doing these things in the future. When the Clash kind of got out of hand over time, at the end people were just cleaning each other out, it just takes one call – one black flag call – to, trust me, it will reset all of us to say, hmm, I can’t be as egregious as I was before. Certainly, those things could happen, people could be in a desperate situation, but they are going to have live with the result because the precedence has been set that there is a chance that will not count.”
Is the line anymore defined?
“I think that – yeah, I feel like I saw something that I’ve never seen before last week, and we saw an unprecedented penalty for it, so sometimes when you see something unprecedented, you have to respond in an unprecedented matter. I believe so. I believe that hard racing is still okay. I think if two cars are battling side-by-side and one of them hits the wall because of close racing that is going to be deemed okay. I think if you come from a long way back – you were not going to win the race until you decided to wreck someone, I think that is clear line in the sand, but sometimes balls and strikes aren’t totally clear. There is one right on the edge and you have to call it, but it is up to us to make the decision. Do we want to put ourselves in that position where it could be called one way or the other? I think that you just have to live with the result. I think if NASCAR policies it and intentional wrecks for the win going forward, there is going to be some close calls, but you put yourself in that spot, so you are going to live with the result and the ruling on it.”
Did you have any issue when NASCAR turned on the caution light?
“I don’t think so. We talked a little about it today. They are going to try to get us to the finish line as much as they can in a safe manner. If it happened right when Joey (Logano) hit the wall, then certainly, we would have been ahead. I don’t know if it would have changed what happened with the 3 (Austin Dillon). I think he was still going to be in an erratic situation. I don’t know. They are always going to try to get us to the finish line, and probably what the deemed was the 22 was up out of the groove, and not an immediate threat, and we were so close to the finish line that they were going to try to let us go as long as they did. In my mind, they did throw the caution on the secondary – when I hit the wall at a heavy rate, they threw the caution kind of right when I hit it, so they didn’t just let it go all the way to the finish line, which was good.”
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