Time for another social media brawl again? NASCAR fans were flabbergasted back in April when two powerful icons of the sport engaged in a virtual slugfest. Denny Hamlin hounded Speedway Motorsports Inc. CEO Marcus Smith for a peeling-off Sonoma track, while the latter turned things a bit too personal. With crashes and flips flooding NASCAR racetracks in recent months, Hamlin is again pointing fingers at the track authority.

Most recently, Tyler Reddick bore the brunt of a smoking wreck on lap 89 of the Las Vegas race. The crash collected Brad Keselowski, Chase Elliott, and Ryan Blaney as well. Most importantly, it was the first crash in Las Vegas in a long time, giving Denny Hamlin the pretext of bashing the track owners.

Denny Hamlin enters battle mode again

Back in the Michigan race in August, Spire Motorsports’ outgoing driver Corey LaJoie faced chaos. His No. 7 Chevrolet spun out after darting into Noah Gragson and suddenly caught air while sliding. It flipped and slid for nine seconds before flipping again on the turf. Another crash followed in Daytona where Josh Berry’s No. 4 Ford flipped and violently collided with the wall. All these incidents led people to fire shots at the Next-Gen car and NASCAR’s failing band-aids like shark fins. However, Denny Hamlin believes the Las Vegas story is a case wrought by the track.

After Tyler Reddick won Stage 1, he was squeezed together three-wide with Elliott, and Martin Truex Jr. Then the No. 45 Toyota rolled through the frontstretch grass, acquiring significant damage. In a recent ‘Actions Detrimental’ video, Denny Hamlin chided NASCAR for not being efficient enough. “Certainly, the grass was a destroyer of cars and certainly caused this one to flip. If we’re so hellbent on these cars not flipping because we think that that’s a problem, what are they going to do about Las Vegas? …This is a track problem.” He further continued his diatribe: “We don’t really have any standard of consistency when it comes to the grass, the infield, and what we have on mile-and-a-halves.”

Then came the shots at SMI. Marcus Smith and his trope apparently did not bother to distinguish between NASCAR and Legend cars’ racing plans in Las Vegas. Denny Hamlin expanded on this: “The Legends cars have not even run that track in the last 10 years, ’cause it’s the Legends Cars’track or the Bandoleros or whatever that run on the infield there…So why is it still a track there? It might be a question for SMI, but you know, if they run something else there, or just, ‘Hey, it cost money to dig this up, and we don’t really want to plant grass.’ I’m not really sure.”

Denny Hamlin is not the only one who noticed SMI’s egregious slip-ups in terms of track management.

When the entire Cup garage was furious

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Back in April, Denny Hamlin singlehandedly fought with the SMI CEO. The slugfest turned personal as Marcus Smith attacked the driver for his lack of a championship and Hamlin said Smith was not worthy of his job. Although they made up later, this was hardly the first time SMI received criticism. For example, SMI’s reconfiguration of Texas Motor Speedway in 2017 was a disastrous failure. Then Steve Swift, who oversees the company’s track preparation and development, dismissed concerns about Kentucky Speedway in 2017.

However, drivers lost patience after the Atlanta reconfiguration in July 2021. Denny Hamlin was the first to fire a shot: “This same group has reconfigured Texas, Kentucky, Bristol with 0 driver input. One of those lost a race, other one we don’t race anymore and last one we put dirt over it. But hey, what do the drivers know.” Others joined – 60-time Cup race winner Kevin Harvick said, “You can’t have a bunch of suits designing a racetrack.” Two-time Cup champion Kyle Busch also chimed in: “There ain’t nobody thinking. Brains for sale. Never used. Operating racetracks.” Even Kyle Larson said: “I heard Marcus Smith say he consulted with a lot of drivers, but I haven’t heard of anybody they talked to,” Kyle Larson said. “Maybe it was in the Truck Series or something.”

Evidently, the Cup garage is amply aware of SMI’s faults. If Tyler Reddick’s wreck indeed turns out to be its fault again, then drivers may be irked yet again.