Denny Hamlin Confesses Shrugging Off Miserable Bubba Wallace Under JGR Rival’s Pressure

Bristol witnessed NASCAR drivers folding under an unexpected setback. Soon after the race began, it was apparent that tires were the stars of the show. Racers fumbled with pit strategies and tire management to make it to the end of the race. But Denny Hamlin and other veterans warmed up to the challenge quickly and soared to the front row. Hamlin’s team folks were not so lucky though.

23XI Racing’s Bubba Wallace and Tyler Reddick struggled quite a bit. Reddick was leading until he spun out and caused a domino effect of crashes. Chase Briscoe nudged Wallace into Erik Jones, leaving the latter two on the tail end of the race. Wallace also faced the heat from his own team owner, Denny Hamlin.

Denny Hamlin spills the beans on sidelining Wallace

The Food City 500 race flagged off on a passive note, with drivers expecting it to be a normal day. But Bristol Motor Speedway literally bared its teeth a few laps in, biting into Goodyear tires. It became a survival of the fittest then, as experienced drivers displayed superior tire management skills. The youngsters were left scratching their heads, the new challenge killing their raw speed tactics.

Bubba Wallace was among them, as the tire wear marbled up and made the track difficult to maneuver. Bootie Barker, his crew chief, dropped a bomb of dismay that NASCAR may not be able to provide extra tires. Then Bubba Wallace suggested, “They’ve got what, three and a half hours to load up a trailer and get it up here? They could just red flag it and run it tomorrow.”

However, even though extra tires were provided, Wallace got a hard time from his team owner. Denny Hamlin recently explained his encounter with Wallace on his podcast ‘Actions Detrimental’, heated up by contact with his JGR teammate, Martin Truex Jr. “There’s clearly cars on the bottom of the racetrack that are bottling things up, and I just wanted to roll the outside. I knew that yes, I’m gonna wear out tires, but like, this is for the win. And I gotta go, and the 19, he was trying to go, but we kept getting jammed up on the bottom, so I just decided to just go middle there. Like 23 was in my way, had to him get out of there.”

Hamlin further stressed how enjoyable the race was. “It was a crazy fun race…it looks like even the guys that did not have good races were like, I mean it was fun. If we had to do this all over again, we would certainly do a lot of things different, to change our result. But man, that was different. I just enjoyed all the teams, all the drivers getting in front of the loop like that, that was just crazy.”

Although Martin Truex Jr zoomed his way through to 2nd place, Wallace lagged and ended in 29th place. Denny Hamlin snagged the Bristol trophy and gladiator sword and is still full of praise for the overall race.

Hamlin dials down the competitive nature of the Bristol race

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Usually in NASCAR races, you see drivers nudging each other and clawing for a lead through raw speed. But Sunday’s Bristol race brought back memories from a fading era when drivers had to contend with more than just fellow racers. The tire management race dropped racers in a battle with the race track itself. That is what Denny Hamlin emphasized post-race on his podcast.

“Everyone was just trying to manage their own race,” Hamlin said. “You’re just trying to hold your line, not get passed but run fast enough to stay in front but not wear out your tires and whoever wanted to make passes would just go to the high line, make a pass and then try to get back down low again. It was a chess game; it really was for 500 laps.”

Denny Hamlin cannot get over the beautiful nitty-gritty of the highly technical Bristol race. Let us see if he can dazzle us at the next short-track race in Richmond on March 31st.

Read More: Kyle Petty Brands Championshipless Denny Hamlin a Hall of Famer After Bristol Mastery Evokes 1992 Memories