“He’s always right. All the buddies know Denny’s always right. I’m sure he was in the right there as well.”
That might be the only point of agreement between Denny Hamlin and Kyle Larson following the High Point 400 on Sunday at Pocono Raceway. Hamlin is adamant that he didn’t initiate contact with either Larson or Alex Bowman on the way to Victory Lane nor would it wouldn’t have mattered if he had.
These are the rules at the end of these races, he says, while not backing down in the slightest.
“I put both those guys, the 48 and 5, in an aero situation,” Hamlin said. “Didn’t touch either one. 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 them in 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 (Turn 2) but always made sure I left a lane or more, more than a lane.”
He says the end result was just a byproduct of the aerodynamics of the Next Gen car — the aero-tight push a car gets when another car gets to the inside.
“He didn’t get his right sides clean, drove in the corner just too far, let us get beside him,” Hamlin added. “I thought we were going to race it out off of two. He got in the fence.”
Larson believes it was a breach in etiquette, especially from a friend, as the two frequently travel and hang out away from the track. He was adamant there was contact before corner entry, contact that didn’t allow them to race it out the way Hamlin indicated that he allowed.
“I didn’t even get to race him,” Larson said. “He ran into him before I ever hit the wall. And we all know the aero stuff that goes on when somebody gets that close to you. His hood flaps were up. He was touching me before we ever got to the exit.
“I obviously lost the handle on my car, was out of the throttle, and hit the wall and tore up my car and finished 21st.”
Hamlin says he doesn’t understand all the vitriol or questions about racing with respect, be it from the Hendrick Motorsports No. 5 team or the fans that rained boos upon him as he celebrated after the race.
“We’re racing for the win; are you shitting me,” Hamlin said. “I mean, if I’m going to give anyone the respect, it’s Kyle Larson just because I respect him as a race car driver, and I think he’s probably the best. Certainly, he’s got my respect. But, damn, I mean, we’re all racing for a win. I guarantee you, roles reversed, it goes the same way.”
Does it matter, at all, if there actually was contact?
“Well, it’s obviously still going for the win,” Hamlin said. “We’ve seen the rules in going for a win.
“Let’s take this incident out. The rules of going for a win has changed in the last 10 years. You’ve been covering this sport for a really, really long time. Like, it’s just different. People just, like, Well, it’s what I had to do. That’s what you hear, right? I didn’t have to.
“But I had to race hard for a win. Was I going to let off and give him all this extra room? Absolutely not. No way. I wanted to race side by side because I earned the spot of getting beside him. I don’t feel like there was any contact. I’m pretty confident in that. I could be wrong, though, because I’m on the other side of the car. At the time I didn’t see his nose, and I was gassing up to try to clear him.
“From what I saw, I ran up into the middle lane, and after that we ran really close to each other. He got in an aero-tight situation that made his car take off. That was it.”
Larson says it’s not going to affect their friendship off the track.
“It’s awkward, or will be awkward or whatever,” Larson said. “On track stuff is on track stuff but I feel like I can do a good job of separating on-track from off-track. He’s still a friend. He races me like an asshole but he’s still a friend.
“I’m just mad right now. I’m sure he will say some dumb stuff (on his podcast) on Monday night and I’ll get mad at that for awhile and I’ll eventually get over it.”
How will it change the way they race on-track?
“You have to be careful how you answer that these days,” Larson said with a laugh, alluding to NASCAR’s penchant for penalizing anything it views as premeditated intentional crashing. “I’ve never had to reach out to him to apologize. I can’t think of one time where I had to say I’m sorry I hurt his day but there’s four or five times he’s had to reach out to me in the nine years I’ve been racing in the Cup Series to apologize.
“As he says, you have to race a certain way to get respect back. I’m an aggressive racer and I get that, but I tend to race my friends with more respect. I just feel like I haven’t gotten that respect back, at least this year.”
He’s referencing an incident between the two of them while racing for the win at Kansas in May.
“I can see from his perspective why he would say that,” Hamlin said. “But in both circumstances, both drivers were racing for the win. I didn’t deem either one of them dirty, certainly not Kansas where he got loose, bounced off the wall, we made contact. That’s just unfortunate. That was very unfortunate.
“Same with today. When I’m in front of him, which I was in the middle of the corner, I can’t see him. All I know is they said, He’s on your corner.
“At that point I’m in the middle of the racetrack. All I want to do is just leave him enough room to not hit the wall. That’s my job, is to carry as much throttle as I possibly can, but leave the person, because I’m not clear, I need to leave him a lane to race in. And I did.”
Unlike Larson, or at least how he phrased it, Hamlin says he races his friends harder.
“Certainly, if he feels as though he owes me one on the racetrack, then that’s up for him to decide,” Hamlin said. “I will distinguish that differently than our friendship off the racetrack.
“What people don’t understand is you actually kind of race your buddies harder than you race others. It’s weird how it works out that way.”
In this moment, at least, that’s just something else they’re not going to agree on.
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