Chase Elliott had every opportunity to provide his Hendrick Motorsports team some important engineering Intel but chose to do the sportsmanlike thing instead.
During qualifying for the Brickyard 400 last weekend, Elliott flagged down Denny Hamlin and gave him a sheet of paper of some kind.
As it turned out, a crew member from the 23XI Racing No. 45 team, who just won the pole with Tyler Reddick, dropped a note with several engineering setup directions.
That would have been pretty valuable information for Hendrick Motorsports.
During the latest episode of his Actions Detrimental podcast, Hamlin shared within reason what was on that sheet of paper.
“A bunch of words and numbers,” Hamlin said. “… He could’ve put it right there in his pocket, and handed it to his crew chief and engineers, and said, ‘Here’s what the No. 45 is doing.’ … It was the car chief’s notepad. … It had pages. … I heard they were giving him shit in the hauler about dropping it.”
Hamlin co-owns 23XI Racing with Michael Jordan.
“You would hate to take something and then it would turn out to be, like, useless. Then you would feel bad, and you’re like, ‘fuck, I should’ve just given this to him.’ But, I mean, listen, it was enough stuff to where I was like, I don’t know. I don’t truly know what it means. He likely wouldn’t know what it means, but somebody would know what it means,” Hamlin added. “… Like, it’s not, it wasn’t our setup, like our setups on there. It’s just like, you know, probably practice adjustments or something like that, I don’t know.“… Chase was like, trying to identify who it came from. And then he saw the No. 45 guys running towards the car after their qualifying lap. So, I think he just saw me, and he was like, there’s the closest 23XI person that I know.”