Column By: MARTY CZEKALA / RPW – LONG POND, PA – Denny Hamlin and Kyle Larson are close friends on and off the track. They race and help each other, give each other rides on plane trips to and from the track, and play golf together.
However, their relationship may need a mulligan after Sunday.
The two tangled with six laps remaining of Sunday’s Cup race at Pocono after Hamlin got inside of Larson for the lead on a restart and put him into the wall, giving Hamlin the win and ending Larson’s chance of a front spot.
After the racing slowed due to a Justin Haley wreck in turn two, Larson went up to him on the frontstretch and doored Hamlin.
“I’ve been cost a lot of good finishes by him throughout my career,” Larson said in his USA interview post-race. “I know he says I race a certain way. I don’t think I’ve ever had to apologize to him about anything. I am p***ed.”
The contact was easily shown on the cameras. As for Hamlin, he defended his move and said there was no contact.
“I put the No. 5 in an aero situation. Didn’t touch either one,” said Hamlin in his post-race news conference. “How can you wreck someone you don’t touch? They make a decision to either let off the gas and race side by side or hit the gas and hit the wall. I mean, I put ’em to those decisions. I didn’t overshoot the corner. I was behind. I tried to get position on him, knew it was going to be tight off two, but always made sure I left a lane or more, more than a lane.”
Hamlin said something similar when he took the checkered flag first last year after putting Ross Chastain in the wall in the same spot. However, he was disqualified for failing the post-race inspection.
“We got position on him, and he just ran out of racetrack,” commented Hamlin last year.
This is not the first time either that the two have tangled. Back at Kansas in May, the two raced for the win on the final lap, and Hamlin barely nudged the quarter panel of Larson, forcing the No. 5 into the wall and giving Hamlin the win.
“He gets in the fence, comes off the fence, and I tag him in the left rear,” Hamlin claimed.
The two have both said it has not affected their relationship as friends.
“Yes, this makes things s***ty and awkward,” Larson stated. “You know, whatever. If he was to call me and say let’s go golf Wednesday, I’d probably go golf. He’s my buddy, but I’m obviously mad about the on-track stuff.”
When asked if he felt he raced with respect, Hamlin said, “We’re racing for the win. Are you s***ting me? I guarantee you, roles reversed, it goes the same way.”
That was not the only aggression on track today. On lap 107, Tyler Reddick and Austin Dillon got into it in turn one that sent Dillon hard into the outside wall after both were battling for position on the corner’s apex. The aftermath? Dillon threw his helmet at his former teammate, which Reddick could dodge.
On USA, Dillon said he must wreck more people to get his message across over the aggression. But why send the message on track?
“Everybody races each other like that,” Dillon told RPW. “At this point, I really don’t know. I thought I was doing the right thing, just going into the middle lane of the track. I wasn’t on the bottom. I was gonna hold the middle. He drove up into me. I’m p***ed about it because, from my perspective, I couldn’t see him. I know I was three wide, but my left front is in front of him. He drove in the corner deep enough to get me back. That was not possible with how I drove in the corner, and he wiped me out at the fastest part of the track.”
Dillon said on the radio he would be talking with Reddick; however, it is unknown if that conversation happened.
“The biggest thing is I’m glad he’s OK because that’s a big hit,” Reddick told Kelly Crandall of Racer.com. “We’re three wide, I’m trying to make it into the corner, and I had one plan of approach, and he had another, and unfortunately, just made contact.”
NASCAR confirmed they will review the helmet toss by Austin Dillon (i.e., walking on the track) and see if any penalties should be sanctioned against him.
But there was more, too. It took four restarts to get a green flag run in stage two! Especially during a time when this week, NASCAR warned drivers about playing games on restarts! Luckily, this was not the case for action when the action was driving hard into turn one. The first accident involved Joey Logano and Daniel Suarez, the second accident for Dillon’s first spin of the day, and the third for Larson getting turned.
Logano exited the care center after Larson’s yellow, as he tried to continue on track before calling it a day. The experienced veteran had a better idea of why there was a lot of aggressiveness today.
“Passing is tough,” Logano said to RPW. “Cars are equally matched. You see that all the time and track position is key. Why did you see the second-place car pit at the end of the stage and not take points? Because they knew how important track position was gonna be. That’s why I had to make an aggressive move down the center. That’s why everybody is making aggressive moves on the starts, and you eventually run out of real estate.”
This may be the new Pocono from now on.
