Daniel Suárez, Aric Almirola call out Denny Hamlin over Kyle Larson incident
Daniel Suárez and Aric Almirola didn’t mince words for Denny Hamlin following his incident with Kyle Larson at Pocono.
The duo provided some inside analysis into the controversial moment during an appearance on NASCAR: Race Hub on FOX. Evidently, the Almirola and Suárez are siding with Larson’s frustration with Hamlin.
First, Almirola explained why he believes that yes, Hamlin technically left Larson a lane to run, that lane was a sure-shot into the wall.
“Well I feel like he just ran Kyle out of room,” explained Almirola. “Like he certainly left him a lane, but that lane’s not a usable lane, because you’re going to run out of grip. You know, I think when we look here on the onboard camera from Kevin Harvick’s race car, Kevin Harvick is on the outside of Martin Truex. Kevin Harvick is in the quote-unquote outside groove. He’s inline with Denny Hamlin. Kyle Larson is above that. Denny Hamlin runs Kyle Larson above that.
“Once you get out of that little bit of black area on the race track, where there’s some grip, you get up into what we call the marbles, and when you get into the marbles it’s dusty, there’s a lot of tire marbles up there, and there’s no grip, right? And your car just takes off. That’s exactly what happened with them.”
As for Suárez, the Trackhouse Racing wheelman was in complete agreement, and also disputed how Hamlin could claim that no contact was made with Larson.
“I totally agree with that, and listen, there’s always two sides to the story, at the end of the day, the only two guys that really understand everything how it happened is the two of them, but based on what we can see and with our experience, there was contact, not once, twice, and I don’t understand how Denny can really say that there was no contact, only aero,” added Suárez. “We understand, we’ve been in that situation before, and the aero is very critical. Sometimes you feel like you’ve made contact. But after seeing the film, you can clearly see that there was two little touches. It wasn’t like a big contact, but there was some contact there.
“So like Aric mentioned, yeah there was a lane, but that’s not a usable lane. Like if someone went into dirt.”
Daniel Suárez: ‘Larson didn’t have an option right there’
Continuing, Suárez also made sure to point out that Larson simply didn’t have any options, as Hamlin is claiming, and it’s impossible to blame the Hendrick star for the incident.
“Something that I feel like is also very important to mention is that Denny has mentioned several times, ‘I gave him the option, he had the lane, he could’ve lifted,’ in my opinion, he didn’t have an option,” the Trackhouse Racing wheelman added. “Larson didn’t have an option right there. He was the leader, he’s in the outside lane, they’re side-by-side. If you get pushed wide, what are your options? I don’t understand. In my opinion, he didn’t have any options.
“The option actually was from him, he gassed it up in the center of the corner earlier, trying to gain leverage, which he did by being side-by-side, but then he runs him wide. So I think the option wasn’t from the No. 5, the option was from the No. 11.”
Later, Almirola made an interesting point regarding the differences in the Next Gen car and how it’s led to incidents like the one we saw between Hamlin and not just Larson, but other drivers as well.
“I think it’s a unique characteristic of this car,” stated the driver of the No. 10 Ford. “Ever since we went to this Next Gen car, the car on the outside is very vulnerable to that aero situation, where the car on the inside can move up and the wake actually makes your car really tight. The old car, the inside car was actually very vulnerable, he would get loose and spin out. So we’ve seen it happen before.
“We’ve seen it happen with Denny, with other drivers. We’ve seen it with Ross [Chastain], we saw it was Chase [Elliott] at Charlotte Motor Speedway. He’s really good at it, at using just enough race track to make you either lift, or you hit the fence.”
While it’s acceptable to utilize the leverage every now and then, Suárez believes it’s simply been taken too far by Hamlin, and that’s why he’s received retaliation from certain drivers, like the aforementioned Elliott.
“Sometimes a little bit too much. Sometimes a little bit too much, because he’s got wrecked,” added Suárez. “What happened in the Coke 600 with Chase was exactly the same thing. But he went too far, and then he got retaliation right there.”
The perspective of Daniel Suárez and Aric Almirola is fascinating, as it’s evident Denny Hamlin’s gaining a new reputation. The effect that has on his chase for a championship remains to be seen, but some revenge may be coming his way soon.