Denny Hamlin: Austin Dillon ‘absolutely’ crossed a line with overtime wrecks at Richmond

The end of the Cook Out 400 on Saturday will have everyone associated with NASCAR buzzing, as Austin Dillon laid waste to Joey Logano and Denny Hamlin both in the final turn to take the win.

Dillon’s crew had urged him to do whatever he needed to to win, including wrecking those in front of him.

He did so, and it worked out perfectly for him as he skated past the competition in the final turn and took home the win and, with it, a playoff berth.

Logano was visibly heated after the race, while Hamlin took a more moderate stance but was still quite unhappy.

“Absolutely a line was crossed,” Hamlin said on the post-race broadcast. “But it’s an invisible line and it’s not defined. I mean they have rules and provisions for stuff like this, but they never take action for it.”

Hamlin was asked if Austin Dillon’s move to wreck both drivers was fair or foul.

“It’s obviously foul, but it’s fair in NASCAR,” he said. “We’re just a different league, right, where there is no penalties for rough driving or anything like that. So it opens up the opportunity for Austin to be able to just do whatever he wants.”

Dillon put himself in position to win when he took a commanding lead in the third and final stage. It looked for a minute like Daniel Suarez might be able to catch him, running on the soft option tires while everyone else was on the hard prime tires. But he didn’t have enough juice to get there.

The race opened back up, though, when Ricky Stenhouse Jr. got into Ryan Preece and spun him around, drawing a late caution and sending the race to overtime.

Austin Dillon got a poor restart, leaving him in the position of needing to wreck the drivers in front of him to win. Hamlin was his second victim.

“The problem I had is I got hooked in the right rear again and I’m just minding my business and he turned left and hooked me in the right rear, blew my damned shoulder out,” Hamlin said. “I don’t know. I mean, the record book won’t care, right, about what happened. He’s going to be credited with the win, but obviously he’s just not going to go far because you’ve got to pay your dues back on stuff like that. But it’s worth it because they jump 20 positions of points. So I understand all that and there’s no ill will there, I get it. I just hate I was part of it. It would have been fun if I was not one of the two guys that got taken out on the last corner, but I understand it. Doesn’t mean I have to agree with it, and we’ll talk about it tomorrow.”

Hamlin did express concern that NASCAR’s lack of policing the type of behavior Austin Dillon displayed on Sunday night sets a bad example for the sport.

“And what happens is you see young guys coming up from the short-track ranks seeing that and they think it’s fine, and that’s why we see some of the lower series turn out the way they do in these green/white checkered situations, because some of the best they’re seeing on Sunday do stuff like that,” Hamlin said. “Who am I to throw stones in a glass house, but man I certainly never won one that way.”