Denny Hamlin says Truck Series Championship drama was ‘not a good look'

You can add Denny Hamlin to the list of drivers who didn’t appreciate what they saw in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series championship race. It wasn’t just Carson Hocevar and Corey Heim, either. There were plenty of others to blame as well.

It was bedlam. At the end of the Truck Series championship, it was restart after restart. During the race, even Hocevar’s aggressive move aside, there were other incidents on the track that made it almost unbearable to watch.

On Actions Detrimental, Denny Hamlin got right into it. He thought the race was ridiculous.

“The Truck Series, what a s***show that was, I mean what a s***show.” Hamlin said.
“It was f***ing terrible, I don’t know how else to put it.”

Hamlin continued his rant.

“It was just not good. It was not a good look. Honestly, it’s kind of old news now we can kind of forget about it. But man what a terrible precedent that set just for how to race for a championship and what not just generally speaking just how guys drove each other – I don’t know why they thought, it’s the last race, so I can just grind all my axes right here in this race.

“A lot of the wrecks weren’t even some championship contender guys that are going for it, they’re just a part-time guy wrecking a full-time guy or a full-time guy wrecking a part-time guy. I just don’t get it, they lost their brains. Maybe they watched the Xfinity race from the previous week and saw that it was okay and now we’re doing this on the regular, so. Yeah, just not a good look. You know I worry about the long-term stuff about if you do nothing about it.”

Hamlin has an idea of how to fix it, though.

Denny Hamlin wants NASCAR to send drivers to the rear

Whenever drivers make overly aggressive moves or cause wrecks on purpose, there is a solution. It happens across the country every week. Almost every day in every grassroots series. Black flag, send them to the rear, hold a driver for a lap or two, or just park them for the rest of the race.

Denny Hamlin pointed this out after the Truck Series issues. Hamlin is a short-track kinda guy, and he’d like to see these short-track rules apply again. It isn’t just for short tracks, though, this can be for any race.

“I guess the fine line is – for instance, someone said, what about Carson would that be an infraction? No that would be a racing incident. Some of these are blatant enough that you can see that someone hit someone and they kept pushing, those are the types of incidents you just penalize.

“But we’re never going to get there I don’t think NASCAR is ever going to make that change. My opinion of it is that it’s, it’s not even a short-term gain anymore. Sure it gets people on social media talking but we’re not having more viewers because of this chaos that we’re creating.”

Is Denny Hamlin right? Should NASCAR penalize drivers during races and set an expectation for how to race?