RICHMOND, Va. – Denny Hamlin’s controversial move on Kyle Larson at Pocono Raceway last Sunday actually started with Ross Chastain at the same track a year earlier.
Several dustups with Chastain in the first half of the 2022 season culminated in Hamlin squeezing the Trackhouse Racing driver out of the lead and the groove and into the wall at Pocono.
Since then, Hamlin has raced with an aggression and devil-may-care attitude that largely had been absent during his 18 seasons in NASCAR’s premier series.
SUNDAY AT RICHMOND: Details, schedules for watching on USA
GETTING PAST POCONO: Kyle Larson struggles with putting Hamlin incident behind
“I think it was after the (Ross) Chastain thing for sure,” Hamlin said. “Certainly, I was very vocal that I need to do something. At the time, the scales were like three to nothing. I was very frustrated. My team was very frustrated at me for not doing anything.
“The mindset has just changed. You have to put it out there that you are going to be aggressive. I think if a guy is going to run into you, you are going to run right back into him. That’s the way I’ve got to change things from this point forward. So I just said it’s time to be more aggressive.”
Hamlin’s win at Pocono Raceway left Larson seething and the rest of the Cup garage mulling its ramifications with the playoffs looming in five races.
The Next Gen car’s lack of sideforce and enhanced durability have made Hamlin’s maneuver an enticing prospect for a team desperately needing a victory.
Will drivers now dive beneath the leader whenever the opportunity is available and try to force the choice that Hamlin put Larson to at Pocono?
Here’s what several drivers said ahead of today’s race at Richmond Raceway:
General views on Hamlin’s move at Pocono. Is it fair?
William Byron: “Well I think it’s becoming more common with certain guys out there. So yeah, it’s becoming more common because what’s the penalty for the inside guy, right? He’s going to hit you and move on. You can’t retaliate. You can’t go up to him. there’s nothing you can do. Like once your car is in the wall, it’s damaged and it’s over for you. So I think you have to look at the tactics of it and what that means for your race, and I think for the inside guy, he kind of goes on.”
Kevin Harvick: “I think the difference in this car when you bump into them side by side, it shoots you up a groove. There was so much more absorbed with the old car, it would just knock in the side. Now it knocks you up a groove. In that instance, it was into the wall. Hard to say what’s fair or foul when you’re racing for the win. Depends on if I win or lose. If I win, it’s perfectly fine. If I lose, it’s not.”
Kyle Busch: “There’s different ways of characterizing driving styles. But also I guess racing styles and how aggressive you are – slide jobs or forcing somebody out of the groove and making them lift or whatever. But the cars being more equal this day in age, yeah – you don’t want to get stuck side-by-side with somebody and allow the third place guy to kind of come into the fray and make it a three-way battle. You want to dispense of that guy as fast as you can, and the easiest way to do that is run them out of the groove. Whether that’s dirty or not, it kind of is what it is. Denny (Hamlin) might be a little remiss and forgotten about him doing that same move to me back in 2010 or ’11 at the All-Star Race and putting me into the fence off of (turn) two. He’s done it for a lot longer than 10 years.”
Ryan Blaney: “You can’t just turn right to get away from him to get clean air. You aren’t going to lift in that situation. You’re in such a tough spot. It’s definitely a weird deal. These cars are strange when it comes to that. Often the inside car has the advantage of getting the outside guy tight. That’s unheard of with the old car and is what it is now. I think racing for the win, you do what it takes. Everyone approaches it differently on what you’re going to do to win a race.”
Austin Cindric: “There’s been dirtier moves to win a race. Depending on who you are, what your situation is, what happened throughout the race, it’s all situational. It’s no different than taking advantage if we’re in the old car, putting it on someone’s door and making life difficult. I think it’s just past hard racing, but I don’t think it’s a move that you wouldn’t see in the playoffs for someone trying to win a race. A guy with a win, hard to say. It’s situational. Ever since I’ve started racing stock cars, it’s race how you want to be raced. That’s an example. If someone’s racing Denny Hamlin, they’ll know that’s what he is going to do to win a race. Whether that’s positive or negative probably depends on what side of the fence you sit on. But race how you want to be raced.”
Chris Buescher: “I don’t think anyone is OK with feeling like they got used up. I don’t feel there’s any understanding or anybody’s opinion changes because there’s a playoff format in play. I don’t think that changes anybody’s understanding or makes anybody feel any better. If you get raced that way, you’re going to be upset. If you’re racing for a win, you’re going to race hard, too, and try to make sure there’s as little room as possible. So that’s a small, knife-edge move. It comes down to a win, you’re going to run hard for it, and it’s going to end up with someone feeling they didn’t get enough space. We’ve definitely seen it become more common and absolute dumping people to win races. Seems it’s become acceptable in our sport and without any penalty and with all the benefits of it, it’s snowballed from there. It’s hard to say you wouldn’t do it if that’s how you feel you’re going to get raced on the other side of that. It’s a slippery slope when you talk rules, regulations, that’s tough. I feel like we can all sit here and talk about different finishes and what you feel was right or wrong. It’s happening in our sport since the beginning of time. At this moment, it just seems like it’s a lot more common now.”
Tyler Reddick: “(Whether it’s fair) depends on what you need, where you’re at, and I mean this is racing. You get awarded points for winning races. Finishing second does not mean nearly as much. It’s where you’re at and what your situation is.”
Christopher Bell: “You are putting the guy on the outside in a bad spot for sure. I think anybody that’s on the outside would not appreciate that.”
Would you make the same move to win a race?
Harvick: “I don’t have to answer that question until I do it. We’ll leave that to Hamlin to answer that one.”
Martin Truex Jr.: “In hindsight, I guess I probably could have done the same thing Denny did (at Pocono). I don’t know. I haven’t really thought about it. I’d probably do the same thing I did in that situation. I restarted second and couldn’t get the lead. It is what it is. We didn’t win. At the end of the day, he did. It’s just not how I race. In hindsight, I could have done something different, I guess. That’s all it was. The way I race people going forward is the same as I always have. In the long game, it pays off. We’ll wait and see I guess. Maybe it won’t, maybe it will. I just race the way I race, and that’s it. I don’t plan on changing. I think in a championship race you cross that line a little bit. I race the way I do, and what happened happened.”
Bell: “I honestly don’t have any idea. I don’t know what would happen in the heat of the moment if I got put in that position. Obviously winning means a lot, but I don’t know. It would just be off of instinct. I don’t believe that I have (made that move) in my NASCAR career. I don’t want to speak out of turn, because I’m sure I’ve made a lot of mistakes and crashed people, but I don’t know that I’ve wronged anyone for a win yet.”
Reddick: “If I need to, yeah.”
Byron: “I think to me, it does matter who you’re racing. Like to me, I try to play it fair to where – if that guy hasn’t done something like that to me, I probably wouldn’t do that to him. I think there’s ways to make that move and still kind of race it off the corner. But you have to look at the trajectory of the car – like (Kevin) Harvick was in fourth and Harvick is a full lane down. He’s on the outside, he’s in fourth, he’s running the normal racing line and both of the cars in front of him were above where he was. That’s way out of the groove. There’s marbles up there. It’s probably hard to tell that on TV because it all looks black and dark, but the racing groove was quite a bit lower.”
Cindric: “I got five weeks (until the playoffs). And I’m not saying yes, and I’m not saying no.”
Busch: “Yeah, I mean I think in certain circumstances – you try to win races as clean as you can, right? I mean that’s always kind of been my way of being brought up. You have to have a race car to go to the next week with, so if you’re crashing your stuff or somebody else’s stuff, they’re going to come back and crash you later. I don’t know – if I was in that same boat, I’m going to try and race it out and do the best I can to figure out how to make a side-draft and make a slide job where I’m clear and I can take that guy’s air, not just force them up the track door-to-door and into the wall. I would say it definitely matters who you’re around and who you’re racing with; what they’re history is and what your history with them is on how they’re going to be raced or how you think you should race them.”
Do you have to be trained to be more aggressive and race differently now than in previous generations?
Denny Hamlin: “I think it’s just different now. The cars are closer together. Passing is more difficult than it’s ever been. Even Mark Martin would have to adjust his style in this type of car, because the days of the gentleman letting the guys go and you will just go and get them later – it’s just a different game these days. I wish we could go back to those days, but that is not where we are at. You have to adapt to where you are at. You adapt or you die. Certainly, I feel like over the last few years, I’ve decided to be more aggressive because I’ve got used up by aggressive and it is hard to blame them at the time – especially in a race-winning situation. Certainly, you are upset when someone right rear hooks you or runs right in the back of you in stage one and spins you out and puts you in the wall. That’s one thing, racing for the win is certainly a lot different than it has been in the past. If you have one person willing to be aggressive and one person not, aggressive will win every time. It’s just the facts of it. Usually, you are not going to find two guys that are the nice guy at the end of these races anymore. Someone has to take it the next level to want it, and then if you have two guys that really want it, you have what you had at Darlington where this person is squeezed, well next restart, now that person is squeezed. That is just what happens. I’m adamant that is when the race fans win. That is when they get to see the action and the passion they want to see.”
Harvick: “I think everybody is taught differently from the very beginning. I’ve watched it with all the way through with everything (son) Keelan has done at this particular point. It’s rough. It gets much more aggressive than how we grew up racing. For sure. That’s how you teach them. I teach my son to do the exact same thing, so it’s just the style and nature of how they’re taught to race, and it’s just evolving all the way to the top now. It’s no different than these guys have raced since they were young kids, and it’s just much more aggressive than what we were brought up racing because it’s just a different style of racing. Different equipment, cars. All the way into karts. We didn’t used to have fairings. And now you have fairings protecting all the wheels and tires, and they’re plastic, and you bounce off each other. You used to do that, you’d flip. You’d just hook wheels and flip. It’s just different.”
Cindric: “It’s whatever suits your narrative. I wouldn’t say I’m in a position to set the stage for what’s acceptable and not. But someone who has influence in the series and pedigree, those are the type of people that young racers look up to, a Kevin Harvick or Denny Hamlin or Joey Logano or Chase Elliott or Kyle Larson. Those are the types of drivers that young drivers will make their quarter-midget No. 5 because they like Kyle Larson or No. 12 if they like Ryan Blaney. That’s the impact that we have. I don’t think we put that into mind. Not that it matters in the short term, but that is what affects how drivers race in the Xfinity Series, the truck series. What are the veteran drivers doing? That is standard. If the veteran drivers are respectful, that’s what is acceptable. It’s race how you want to be raced. When you have status and respect. That changes when you change how you race. It’s a very social sport. NASCAR is so much more social because there are penalties for racing over the limit or over the line or with contact or disrespectfully or within disregard of the outcome. Because our cars can take it. Open wheel racing and Formula One, it’s the most cutthroat racing industry there is. It’s brutal over there, and if they could pull off the moves that we pull off and their cars would hold up, they’d do it. But they can’t because their car falls apart. Same with IndyCar and with sports car racing, the suspension components are a little more brittle. Carbon fiber bits are more expensive. And there’s driver standard penalties, not that I think that’s what we should have. But the only penalty is hurt feelings in a lot of instances. It’s situational because you have to decide how much value you put in someone else’s feelings. And how’s it going to affect how you’re raced in the future.”
Has the Next Gen been a major factor in making this move a viable option?
Harvick: “It is definitely different with this particular car just because you can get away with so much more damage, and you have less damage, because you can use it like a battering ram. So you definitely have to be more aggressive, and passing is just different, so when you have the opportunity, you have to try to capitalize on it in that particular instance.” (Do you like that style of racing like that?) “I’m retiring.”
Hamlin: “It is so different with the Next Gen because with the other car, the guy on the outside would use the air to make the guy on the inside loose. You’ll see in the Xfinity Series or the Truck Series, the guys on the outside want to get closer to the inside guy and get him loose, and sometimes they spin, sometimes they don’t, but that is them manipulating the air to make it tough on that guy. In the Cup car, it’s the other way around. The power for the position is actually on the bottom, not the top. It certainly is a lot different than the other one.”
Byron: “I think it’s gotten that way with the Next Gen car because of the way the aero works. I explained this to Dale (Earnhardt) Jr. in the pre-season – the old car would get aero-loose under somebody, so you would never get that close to somebody without sucking your car around. Eventually, you’d kind of tag them in the left-rear and both of you would crash. With this car, the inside car gets tighter and comes up into the outside car. The inside car is the one at the advantage, aero-wise, so he has the control. He can move up and put that guy in a vulnerable spot where he really has no choice but to hit the wall. I see it a little bit differently. I don’t think in Kyle’s (Larson) situation; he’s already lifting on SMT so I think he’s going to hit the wall regardless. Like Denny (Hamlin) is the one that put him in that spot.. very similar to what happened at Texas (Motor Speedway) with us. So I think it’s just a situation where the inside guy is at an advantage – he has all the cards to play. And the outside guy is really dependent on what kind of race the inside guy wants it to be. I think it’s just a product of the Next Gen car and the way that the aero works.”
Bell: “You definitely have to put an emphasis on restarts. That’s what it all boils down to, and then the cars evolving from Gen 6 to Next Gen are a lot more durable and can take a lot more contact, so certainly the aggression level has gotten way higher since we’ve got to the Next Gen cars because people are realizing you can get away with a lot more than you could with the Gen 6 car.”
Ross Chastain: “It does. We’re not relying on the sideforce. So when we get side by side in Xfinity or truck or the past Cup car, you’d spin out, and that’s not the case with the current Cup car. It’s a choice. Once the inside car makes a choice, they give the outside car a choice, and it’s either lift or crash.”
