First of all, we’ll just take a page of the NASCAR’s “Blue Checkmark Media’s” playbook and ignore Denny Hamlin’s desperate attempt to wreck Chase Elliott to prevent the #9 from making a last-lap (heck, last 100 feet) pass for the lead this past weekend in Kansas. (At least I’m not trying to claim that Elliott “doored” Hamlin.)
Instead, I’m going back a week to revisit a story that seemingly got swept under the carpet: the time that Hamlin successfully wrecked another driver. Only it wasn’t for the lead, it wasn’t even for a Top 10 position, and the driver in question was his own teammate, Ty Gibbs.
It shouldn’t take readers too long to remember, since it happened a week ago at Loudon…or do they still call it New Hampshire?
Anyways, Hamlin apparently got tired of Gibbs holding him up and knocked the youngster out of the way. In fairness to Gibbs, the kid’s just a product of Joe Gibbs Racing getting Kyle Busch to “retire” from the Xfinity Series the same year that Ty ran Xfinity. Gibbs didn’t have the valuable experience of just pulling over to let the more important drivers drive by.
By the way, totally lost in all this is, while Hamlin may claim that favour should be given to playoff drivers, Gibbs’ ensuing wreck after the contact with Hamlin very nearly caught up the #20 of Christopher Bell, another playoff driver and a JGR teammate to Hamlin and Gibbs.
After some of the most “say something without saying anything” interviews since Kyle Busch’s “Everything’s Great”, there was some coverage about JGR handling everything internally and then it was back to business as usual, and off to Kansas we go.
Except…
The fact remains that Denny Hamlin intentionally wrecked another driver. The fact that it was teammate Ty Gibbs should actually be a mute point. After all, this was the same Denny Hamlin who, when he had an incident with Chase Elliott during the 2023 Coca-Cola 600, was demanding Elliott be suspended almost before his car had come to a stop.
Let’s also not forget earlier this year when Richard Childress Racing’s Austin Hill made contact with JGR’s Aric Almirola at Indianapolis Motor Speedway during an Xfinity race earlier this year. Hill was suspended for one race and lost all playoff points gained during the regular season.
And so, NASCAR, where was the penalty, the fines, the reprimand, basically punishment of any sort? (This comes after several incidents where Toyota drivers pitted in teammates’ stalls to get lugnuts tightened with no penalty. Instead, NASCAR only stepped in when Brad Keslelowski did the same thing in Joey Logano’s pit box.)
NASCAR remained silent, except for media outlets passing it off as JGR having handled it internally, as part of a behind closed doors meeting. And just like that, let’s talk about changing the playoff system. I swear, NASCAR is almost on par with mainstream media when it comes to changing the subject when it doesn’t fit the narrative.
To close, think on this: Josh Williams received a harsher penalty for parking his car in Atlanta in 2023.
johnmilner.ca 