Denny Hamlin had a pretty good look at it in real time, but also had the benefit of a replay, by time he got around to dissecting the William Byron, Martin Truex and Ryan Blaney incident from Sunday at Darlington Raceway.
Blaney restarted sixth on Lap 129, when Byron forced a three-wide pass under Martin Truex Jr. and Blaney. Byron tagged Truex who got into Blaney. The chain reaction sent Blaney into the wall and out of the race with a broken right rear tow link.
The entire ordeal left the generally short-tempered Blaney furious over the radio.
“I’m going to kill both those motherfuckers, that’s what I’m going to do,” said the defending champion over the radio.
Blaney even returned to the track and faked taking a swipe at Byron under caution, although he says that was a byproduct of the steering being broken on his Team Penske No. 12 Ford Mustang Dark Horse.
Speaking on his podcast, Hamlin placed the blame on Byron while also offering commentary about Blaney and his well-documented temper.
“William Byron went three-wide bottom, didn’t hold his line and shoved [Truex] into [Blaney]. The end,” Hamlin said. “Blaney lost his shit on the radio. That’s a shocker. I think he needs some therapy … I’ve never seen anyone so quiet in person and so wild on the radio. Never. He is the epitome of when you strap on the helmet, it cuts the circulation off.”
Regardless, how did Hamlin see the entire ordeal, one that the ensuing stack-up ultimately collected in a not insignificant way.
“It was William’s responsibility to keep his car low, and if that means that he had to lift, then he should have lifted,” Hamlin said. “Again, he made just a very low percentage move, it just has a very low success rate of going down there and clearing and if you don’t clear it’s going to cause a huge stack up off the corner. If it wasn’t the 19 and the 12 that was going to wreck it was going to be us, the guys that were behind. Because I think I was right behind the 17. The 17 hit the 19, I hit the 17. It caused a lot of damage for our 11 car for sure.”
With that said, Hamlin doesn’t share Blaney’s fury.
“It’s just a racing thing,” Hamlin said. “The 24 was definitely the one at fault but it’s not like [Byron] ran into someone and caused them to wreck. He just made a move that was inevitably going to end in a wreck.”
Matt Weaver is a Motorsports Insider for Sportsnaut. Follow him on Twitter.