Denny Hamlin isn’t one to mince his words. However, he’s one of the top, most marketable drivers in NASCAR today. And to get to that position, and more importantly, to remain at that position, one needs a sense of awareness as to how far the envelope can be pushed.
Luckily for Hamlin, his sponsors, and his teams, he has that, something he recently proved.
Towards the very end of the Cup Series race in Talladega, Hendrick Motorsports driver Kyle Larson made an ambitious move to his right. The only problem was, he hit 23XI Racing driver Kurt Busch, who then collected his own teammate, Bubba Wallace, ending both their races in yet another disappointment.
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So knowing the 23XI Racing co-owner Denny Hamlin, he didn’t refrain from calling out the defending champ.
And to do so, the Joe Gibbs Racing driver posted a meme clip from The Family Guy that synced with Kyle Larson shoving Kurt Busch.
The only problem with that was, that it was potentially offensive to a certain group of people in the society, something Hamlin realized quite early and deleted the video. He then followed it up with an apology.
“I took down a post I made earlier today after reading some of the comments. It was a poor choice of memes and I saw how it was offensive. It came across totally wrong. I apologize,” he tweeted.
I took down a post I made earlier today after reading some of the comments. It was a poor choice of memes and I saw how it was offensive. It came across totally wrong. I apologize.
— Denny Hamlin (@dennyhamlin) April 26, 2022
Denny Hamlin suggested Kyle Larson was responsible for the late-race wreck
While Denny Hamlin may have deleted the tweet that was potentially offensive, he did make a comment before that which suggested he held Larson responsible for the wreck.
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NASCAR had posted a video of the on-board from both the 23XI Racing drivers as they crashed, on which Hamlin tweeted, “Not clear”.
Anyway, it remains to be seen how Denny Hamlin handles this situation in the coming weeks. One can imagine that he’d surely be questioned and quizzed about the deleted video.
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So it’ll be interesting to see how he responds.