Denny Hamlin still unsure what blew up in engine at Sonoma

Denny Hamlin suffered a blown engine during the Sonoma race on Sunday and is not sure how it happened. On his Actions Detrimental podcast, the three-time Daytona 500 winner reflected on the incident that happened during the second lap of the NASCAR Cup Series race.

“I drove for exactly two laps and then we blew up,” Hamlin said. “I don’t know exactly what it was still. It seemed like something in the bottom end. Christopher Bell’s last weekend was like a valve spring, so something on the top end. Ours grenaded something on the bottom. …It ain’t going anywhere else because it is destroyed.”

Hamlin went on to take a shot a Kyle Larson when talking about the engine. “I’m not an engine guy. I would think that if you just ran more practice, you would’ve found it. It would’ve shown up in qualifying. If you ran four more laps of practice, it would’ve blown up at the end of practice, and then you wouldn’t have had all of these issues. But still, unfortunate,” Hamlin explained. “It was like we weren’t even there. We pulled a Kyle Larson on this race. We just didn’t show up.”

Hamlin is referring to Larson missing the Coca-Cola 600 after competing in the Indy 500. The interesting thing is Larson won the Sonoma race and is back on top of the standings. Hamlin was on top of the standings before the race but dropped to third after suffering a DNF.

Denny Hamlin on his ‘not ideal’ Sunday at Sonoma

When Hamlin suffered the blown engine on Sunday, he spoke to Fox Sports’ Jamie Little about the incident. “No, no [indication],” he said. “Just the gearing is a little weird for the track. There’s a lot of high-end RPM stuff — same as everyone else and just blew up on Lap 2. Not really sure. They’ll look at it and figure it out, but certainly not ideal.”

The Sonoma race was an interesting one, to say the least. Along with Hamlin, Ty Gibbs, Austin Dillon, Cam Waters, Chase Briscoe, Justin Haley and Josh Berry suffered DNFs. Kyle Busch was involved in a wreck with Ross Chastain but finished the race and placed 12. Martin Truex Jr. came close to finishing second, but his car ran out of gas during the final lap and he finished 27th.