Denny Hamlin got his 62nd career win in Nashville, but the jump start raised serious questions about the veteran driver with 734 career starts in the Cup Series.

While Hamlin showed immense skill driving through the field, a different side of the incident has come to light. As it turned out, Hamlin had a different understanding of the start procedure. 

Speaking on Sirius XM, the No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing driver said, “ I guess I definitely wasn’t aware that you had to be in the restart zone. I started many races from pole, and I always have just used the rule of thumb that as long as you wait a little while, in the end, I know they say in the drivers' meeting, when the green flag is displayed, you can start the race. I always say, well, they’re going to throw the green when I take off.”

Hamlin said he didn't realise that the hard line to the rule is the beginning of the restart zone and called it a learning moment. As Hamlin was sent to the back of the grid, his number was taken off the leaderboard, which had JGR owner Joe Gibbs confused. 

Speaking at the factory after Hamlin’s win, Gibbs said, “I will tell you this, that was different.”

Gibbs went on to break down the incident as he saw it and how the moment left him perplexed. Upon not seeing Hamlin on the leaderboard, he wondered if NASCAR had somehow missed the No. 11.

The JGR owner said, “Let me tell you what happened on that. I totally missed it. And so the whole time I’m looking up there, they don’t list the 11. I go, they’re missing the 11. But I actually saw you coming around late. I thought you were that far out front.”

Hamlin wasn’t that far out as it became evident later. He was penalized and sent to the back of the grid, so at a particular point, he was closer to the end of the pack than the front. 

He said, “I didn’t realize they didn’t score me, they didn’t give me credit for leading those three laps. I just zoned out there for a minute. I just thought it was the correct time to go. It turned out nobody else is on the same page as I was.”

Hamlin was in the lead for three laps before the penalty was dished out.

Hamlin Lauds Crew’s Resilience

Qualifying on pole, Denny Hamlin’s car was set up in a manner to gain performance when in clear air, as opposed to being able to cut through traffic. When he went down to the back of the pack, the entire strategy flipped.

But Hamlin said his team was pretty good at handling the situation. 

On Sirius XM, the 23XI co-owner said, “A really tough race track to pass on or overtake when you have equal tires. Restarts was really one of our strengths. We gained some spots on restarts. We gained some spots on the racetrack during race runs, and we also gained some spots during some strategy.”

Hamlin also spoke on his team’s composure during the Nashville race. The driver explained, “We had it all put together. No one panicked; we worked on our car. It was not driving very good back there. And we had our car set up more to run out front versus in traffic, so that threw us for a little bit of a loop.”

Hamlin further said that the track didn’t come in as they had expected. But with all said and done, the No. 11 was happy with the way his race worked out. The racing star got his first custom-painted Gibson Les Paul guitar along with the trophy at Nashville Superspeedway.

Read more at the RFK Racing Digest!

Written by

Debrup Chaudhuri

Edited by

Arundhoti Palit