Denny Hamlin gets animated after being reminded of Gateway dust-up with Ross Chastain

Denny Hamlin has other beef on his mind, but the return of NASCAR to Gateway has him thinking of old rival Ross Chastain.

While Hamlin’s dust-up with Chase Elliott was the talk of the sport over the last week, the Joe Gibbs Racing driver’s slew of run-ins with Chastain began at this time last season. It sparked a myriad of incidents, and the two have been linked ever since.

If you need a gentle reminder, just check out the video below, where NASCAR on NBC shared a highlight reel from last season’s race at Gateway.

Ross Chastain & Denny Hamlin had several on-track run-ins last year at Gateway. 🫨#NASCAR pic.twitter.com/TiR2pOxrHL

— NASCAR on NBC (@NASCARonNBC) June 1, 2023

On this week’s edition of Hamlin’s Actions Detrimental podcast, the NASCAR veteran elaborated on how he feels about the newfound rivalries he’s been finding himself a part of with Chastain and now Elliott.

“They’re going to play that highlight all week,” Hamlin lamented, regarding last season’s incident. “Me and Chastain. Listen, here’s the deal. I hate this, because it’s like, ‘Oh, well you and Chastain, you and Elliott,’ I’m the one getting wrecked every time. Like, stop the s—. I’m the one that’s getting the crap end of these deals.

“I don’t know. I don’t know how to stop it, other than — I don’t know, I don’t even know. I don’t know how to stop it, but I hate that we’re in the headlines for this kind of stuff, especially when I’m getting the s— end of it. It’s like, I did give [Kyle] Larson the s— end at Kansas, but you know that’s, in my opinion, hard racing for sure, definitely not anything intentional.”

Regardless of the hype between Hamlin and Chastain returning to the scene of the crime, the 23XI Racing team owner couldn’t hide his excitement for returning to the track to compete once again.

“But yeah, it’s Gateway. I’m looking forward to it. St. Louis did a phenomenal job with that race track last year. Track president there did a phenomenal job. He also got me on a badass golf course on Friday or Saturday, I can’t remember where, but I’m going to have to give him a ring again for that,” stated Hamlin. “But yeah, I like it. I think it’s a fun track. It widened out. They put a lot of resin, I remember, at the top of that track, and it made turns 3 and 4 super wide. More than likely they’ll probably do that again.

“But it’s just there’s so much has happened with cars, and this Next Gen that we’re running now has got so many different bars and pieces and stuff cut out of it from what we had last year that I don’t know, clearly. The No. 1 car was the most dominant car in the [Coca-Cola] 600 last year and you know, they couldn’t hit their ask today. So you just can’t draw too many comparisons from when it’s a 12 month difference. When it’s race one versus race two yes, but not when it’s 12 months removed. So I’m excited. I think that we should be pretty good. We’ve been pretty good everywhere.”

Time will tell if Denny Hamlin can avoid conflict and race himself to victory on Sunday, but a ton of eyes will be on that No. 11 car this weekend.