Denny Hamlin Comes Clean on Intentional Pit-Road Wreckout With Jimmie Johnson’s Star

Wrecks, crashes, and pit road trouble were the story of Denny Hamlin’s run at Talladega last weekend. While his DNF exit was a rather unfortunate one, being caught up in a mess sparked off by Erik Jones and Bubba Wallace, this wasn’t his first encounter with getting wrecked in the race that day.

During the green flag pit stops early in the race, the No. 11 car hit the puddle of water coming into the pit road, causing Hamlin to lose control of his race car. While he did save himself from not banging against the wall, he almost took out John Hunter Nemechek in his attempts. Surprisingly, the JGR driver was well aware of his actions, but he had no choice but to try to keep his racecar intact.

A bad day at the office for JGR star

The racetrack had experienced rain showers prior to the event. Still, NASCAR did a good job of getting the track as dry as possible for the race to go as scheduled. However, there were a few blind spots that came to bite back at some of the drivers, and Hamlin was one of them. But in his retaliation, he wasn’t going to let a puddle of water ruin his day. So he decided to intentionally wreck the oncoming No. 52 car to help mitigate the damage.

Sharing his view on the whole incident, Denny Hamlin on his podcast explained. “I just did a horrible job all day long getting on pit road. Until the final stop, actually, I did okay. The first one, I just ran through a puddle, spun out. I was more worried about hitting the inside wall, so I just bailed and said, f**k it, I’m just going to spin through the grass and bounce off whoever I’ve got to not hit the inside wall.”

But Karma soon came to haunt him late in the race when all the Toyotas were working on a group strategy. While it wasn’t intentional, Nemechek was the one who tagged Hamlin’s car in an ugly pile-up that took half or more of the Toyota out of the race. The only positive for Hamlin to take home from the race was that his driver from 23XI emerged victorious. Thus picking up the first win for the Japanese manufacturer on a Superspeedway racetrack in the NextGen era.

Moreover, this was also Michael Jordan’s first time experiencing a race win, and he was ecstatic about celebrating the win in the victory lane.

Winning the NASCAR race was like winning an NBA playoff game for Michael Jordan

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For a superstar athlete who has tasted so many victories and championship triumphs, the win at Talladega was surreal for him. Jordan has been criticized for not being present for his team during the event, but whenever he did make it, his team just couldn’t win. This was getting to the point where it was considered a curse. In his presence, the drivers just couldn’t bring home the win. But all of that changed when Tyler Reddick took the checkered flag.

Sharing his winning feeling after the race, Jordan said, “This, to me, is like an NBA playoff game. I am so ecstatic, obviously, for the fans who support the sport itself. And we’ve been working hard, trying to get ourselves up to compete against all the top guys in this sport. But we’ve done a heck of a job just to be where we are. And for us to win a big race like this, I mean, it means so much to me and for the effort that the team has done.”

The finishing position of the race also caused some big shuffles in the driver’s standings. Denny Hamlin dropped to sixth, while Chase Elliott took the third spot. Reddick made big leaps by jumping three positions and now finds himself in fifth.