Denny Hamlin: Ross Chastain block at Talladega was 'bullshit racing'

As the Toyotas made their move on the outside of the track to catch up to the rest of the field, Ross Chastain put a nasty block on Denny Hamlin. Clearly, the Joe Gibbs Racing driver is not happy. He called that kind of move in NASCAR “bullshit racing.”

Denny Hamlin and Ross Chastain have no love lost between them. These two haven’t ever been friends on the race track, and rarely have anything nice to say to one another off the track.

Hamlin was a little subdued in his criticism of Chastain immediately after the race. Having time to think about it, he’s close to being furious about it.

“But I believe the roles reversed, he would have, he would probably just run into me. I would think he would run into me as he should and say, ‘I didn’t make you swerve. I was running my lane with the pack of cars that was on the race track. You tried to merge up into a lane that wasn’t there.’ So, I just think it’s bullshit racing and I think that um, I guess you got to just hold it down and if you cause a wreck, hopefully, you spin them out and don’t wreck yourself,” Hamlin explained on Actions Detrimental.

“That’ll be hard to do, but at some point, I’ve got caught in wrecks and finished so horribly lately on these superspeedways, it’s like, what do I care? At this point, just cram it in there and say, ‘Sorry, it was your fault, not mine.'”

The block completely checked up the line of Toyotas. Denny Hamlin had to get out of the gas in order to avoid wrecking Chastain and likely a few of his teammates. Then again, Hamlin had already dumped Christopher Bell…(I’m joking, but he did do that.)

Denny Hamlin calls out Ross Chastain for trying to ‘wreck us’

With the Toyota plan foiled by Ross Chastain, there wasn’t much they could do. Denny Hamlin settled for P23 – P21 after the double DQ of Ryan Preece and Joey Logano. Bubba Wallace was the only Toyota to make it to the top-10 and that was even with two of the top-five being disqualified.

So, you can understand the frustration. And had Hamlin gone on to wreck Chastain in that instance, who would be at fault? It felt like a cheap move, but one that has been done in the past. Hamlin went as far as to say Chastain should have been black flagged for his actions.

Go figure, Denny Hamlin isn’t happy with Ross Chastain. The sky is blue and the grass is still green, the last time I checked, too. These two are just never going to see eye-to-eye, and any instance like this between the two is going to feel personal when it occurs.