Denny Hamlin details reason behind late contact, wreck with Austin Dillon at COTA

Denny Hamlin is taking full responsibility for the wreck involving him and Austin Dillon at COTA on Sunday. On the Actions Detrimental podcast, Hamlin explained what caused the wreck that happened late in the race.

“As soon as I went left to pass him, I wasn’t offline or anything. But I could see the track had s*** all over it,” Hamlin said. “You can’t see that until you pull out of line. I’m up his ass and we’re going through the esses. I’m like, okay, I’m going to go left here and get on the inside. As soon as I went left, I hear s*** hitting the fenders. …As soon as I touched the break, over, spun out.”

Denny Hamlin then revealed he contacted Austin Dillon after the race. “I texted Austin and said, ‘Listen man, I apologize. I ran through s***,'” Hamlin said. “It’s no excuse, it’s still on me no matter what the circumstances, so it certainly screwed RCR (Richard Childress Racing) over in more ways than one.”

Hamlin also speculated that the wreck may have prevented Kyle Busch from winning at COTA. “It was no given that Kyle was going to win,” he said. “I hated it because Kyle just did an awesome job all day long leading the race. We ended up having a great race anyway, but it was certainly a caution he didn’t want to see, either.”

Hamlin has gotten off to a somewhat slow start to the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series season. He earned a P24 at Daytona, finished sixth at Atlanta, and earned a P21 finish at COTA. It’s likely Hamlin will pick things up since the NASCAR drivers will be competing on more traditional ovals going forward, but he knows if he wants to win his first Cup title, he has to be more consistent.

But what if things don’t get better for Hamlin and he misses the playoffs? Will it be time for him to call it career?

“Only on Mondays when I feel like shit. I have a bad race, my body hurts, and it’s like, uh, man,” Denny Hamlin said in November. “But every Sunday, I get in that car and I’m like, ‘I got a chance to win.’ And that’s just something that’s going to be hard for me to give up. Surely one day there will be a light switch that flips on that I’m no longer as quick as I was and things like that, but I still feel like I can win it, and I feel like I can win every week and that’s what drives me.”

On3’s Jonathan Howard contributed to this story.