Tyler Reddick’s eagerness to win in Las Vegas led to some aggressive moves. Similarly, his March rival Kyle Larson was equally excited to add a fourth win to his Sin City glorious streak. Consequences? Denny Hamlin got caught in the middle of it. Pit-stop mistakes haunted both Larson and Hamlin throughout. But amidst his team’s slip-up, Larson, whose career average finish of 9.3 at Las Vegas is the best among all active drivers, took out his frustration on Denny Hamlin’s No. 11 Toyota.

19 years he has waited to hold a Cup trophy – and Denny Hamlin is still waiting. A recovery from a disastrous Round of 16 with a top-ten in Bristol and a wild stroke of luck that pulled him through Talladega, what about the Round of 8 opener? Well, first, a snail-slow 13.4-second pit stop, and then, an older tire strategy fell flat. Hamlin went from 11th in Stage 1 to outside the top 20 in Stage 2.

And adding to his piling troubles was Kyle Larson‘s bizarre antics in Las Vegas. In Stage 1 of the South Point 400, Larson nudged Denny Hamlin’s car up the track near Turn 1. Hamlin eventually finished P8 which is impressive considering how challenging it was. Freddie Kraft, Bubba Wallace’s spotter, and Hamlin’s employee, evaluated what went down and believes what transpired between the two and the pit road disasters that led to the “wrong guy” (Joey Logano) winning on the latest episode of Door Bumper Clear today. Kraft said,

“Denny’s the first one out at minus 27…I don’t know what happened there. There was a restart there, mid-part of the race where it looked like….there was a little bit of stack-up in the front and Larson just kind of drove into Denny. It gave himself nose damage, gave damage to Denny. Then they both had just awful days at pit road for whatever reason yesterday.

Kraft continued that there was no end to Denny Hamlin‘s misfortune – he left the race with a 27-point deficit. His championship bid took a further hit when Joey Logano won the race, shuffling up the playoff grid. “Larson still had a good, big enough cushion coming in. But Denny, like I said, one bad race will put you and the wrong guy wins.

“I think Joey was going to end up 4th in points, I think he’d be the cutline. And Denny would be like 15-16 out. Now he’s 27 out because of Joey winning. So you know, couple of dominoes falling the wrong way.”

Yet all hope is not lost, as Hamlin has three wins and six poles at Homestead, the venue for the next race. “You’re not in a must-win situation yet – Denny’s obviously really good at Homestead.”

Despite Hamlin’s employee blaming Larson, the latter recognized that he made a mistake.

No hard feelings between rivals

We all know about the iconic rivalry between the Hendrick Motorsports and Joe Gibbs Racing icons. It started last year when Denny Hamlin nudged Kyle Larson for the victory in Pocono. However, that bitter impasse is breaking – signs appeared when both acknowledged each other’s driving prowess recently. And after Larson ‘drove into’ Hamlin in Las Vegas, the HMS driver owned up to his mistake. Hamlin was furious at first: “I get we wanna haul — but I was on the 17, I had nowhere to go,” But Larson’s response may have softened him. Immediately after pushing him, Larson apologized on his car radio.

Despite his humility, Sin City held in store some solid challenges for Larson. The No. 5 pit crew spent too much time tightening the right-rear wheel on lap 125, while the left-rear tire was ignored. So Larson had to make an additional pit stop that put him two laps down. He somehow made his way to 11th and sighed post-race: “I think I got to eighth before the green-flag cycle. I was much better than the guys in front of us and thought we would finish the end of the stage in third or fourth and then we had the biggest mess of a pit stop I think I’ve ever seen. That was just unfortunate.”

Evidently, both sides were having a particularly hard day in Sin City, while Joey Logano rejoiced on Victory Lane. Let us see what fortunes the two veteran drivers have for the rest of the playoffs.