Denny Hamlin reacts to Kyle Larson's bad luck at Kansas

Denny Hamlin and Kyle Larson were expected to dominate at Kansas Speedway this past weekend, but the latter ran into some trouble early in the race, and was never able to recover throughout the afternoon.

In the end, Larson finished P26 after suffering some damage due to debris, and while he’s still 18 points above the cut-line, the unpredictable schedule featuring Talladega and the Charlotte Roval have some wondering if he’s in trouble. On latest episode of his Actions Detrimental podcast, Hamlin reacted to Larson’s tough luck, and why his day transpired the way it did at Kansas.

“I couldn’t understand, I didn’t see him all day. I thought that — he was starting P11 or something like that, and I was starting P8, so I thought, within the first few laps, I was going to see him at some point, we were going to battle, but I just never saw him,” Hamlin explained. “Then, I saw him sitting on pit road, and the entire team was working on it, and I’m like, ‘What happened to him? Did he get in that first lap wreck, or what?’ So I watched it, and it looked like he just blew a tire there. You can kind of see, not the smoke, but just kind of like the air coming out of the back of the car, and he hits the wall.

“Man, it must’ve just drug some bad stuff with the bottom of the race car, and again, that whole diffuser that we’re getting all this downforce from, if you know off a portion of it, or damage it at all, it just kills what your car is capable of, and certainly, when I’m looking at his car and saying, ‘Where’s the damage?’ It’s all on the underbody. But it was crazy to see all the speed it took out.

“… These things are fragile on the underside. Overside, not fragile. You can beat and bang with these things pretty easily, and not get over-body damage, but the underbody? I mean, you roll over some duct tape and you’re risking losing a lot of speed in your car. … It just doesn’t take much.”

All things considered, Kyle Larson isn’t in such a bad spot entering Talladega, but his performance at Kansas was a shock to many of his peers, including Denny Hamlin. We’ll see if the talented wheelman has some better luck this weekend.