Denny Hamlin rips pit crew after Kansas: ‘One of their worst days ever’

It was a tough day for Denny Hamlin on the track at Kansas, as solid progress on the track was undone time and time again by shoddy work on pit road.

Hamlin opened up on the race after it concluded, blasting his pit crew for its performance on the afternoon.

“They know that today was one of their worst days ever,” Hamlin said. “They’ll just go work to clean it up.”

Hamlin had stints toward the front of the pack, but he was undone repeatedly by mistakes on pit road on restarts. He fell back into the pack and couldn’t work his way up enough times to make it count.

Unofficially, Denny Hamlin finished P8 on the day.

“I don’t know, I’ve had some pretty bad days, but just yeah, horrible day,” Hamlin said. “Came out 15th, 20th, then we had a loose wheel. Just terrible. Terrible day.”

Coming out of the race, Denny Hamlin sits at +11 on the playoffs cut line. He’ll still have to work to make the round of eight.

That could have been avoided with a better finish at Kansas, but such is life. Hamlin seemed intent on the fact that had his pit crew performed better he would have had a shot to do a whole lot more on Sunday.

“We should have won the race,” Hamlin said. “We had the fastest car, but every time we get to the top three the caution comes out and we restart 15th, 20th. Can’t show how fast your car is when you’re back of the pack. All you can do is just keep making positions back up to the front over and over and over and eventually you just run out of laps and someone else wins.”

Denny Hamlin will now look to put the race behind him, but there’s a lot of work to be done. He admitted he is not in a good headspace right now.

“I’m not in it mentally, I can tell you that,” he said. “There’s a lot of wires crossed and bolts loose at the moment. But what can you do? I’ll just do the best I can to drive the car and do my part.”