Denny Hamlin thought he ruined Ricky Stenhouse Jr.'s race in Chicago: 'Nearly just wiped the 47 clean out'
Denny Hamlin didn’t have the best evening during 2024’s iteration of the Chicago Street Race, and he almost dragged Ricky Stenhouse Jr. down with him.
Stenhouse Jr. was having a tremendous time in the Windy City, the opposite of how Hamlin was performing on the wet race track. However, contact between the No. 47 and the No. 11 almost threw cold water on Stenhouse’s burning fire, but thankfully he was able to keep on trucking afterwards.
During the latest episode of his Actions Detrimental podcast, following the weekend that was in Chicago, Hamlin elaborated how his contact with Stenhouse Jr., and how the Joe Gibbs Racing wheelman thought he wiped the No. 47 out on Sunday.
“It’s way out of my element,” Hamlin said, regarding his struggles on wet-weather tires. “I can’t find the limit on corner breaking, on entry. The minute I tried to push it is when you saw me turn around backwards in Turn 6, and took — nearly just wiped the No. 47 just clean out. I looked at his car after we got done, after we got back straight again, and the left side of his bumper was bent down like, three inches or something.
“It was big, and I’m like, ‘Oh God, just crushed his race.’ He just talked to me in my — I was in my car, during one of the rain delays, well the biggest rain delay — kind of in the middle of the race there. He was like, ‘So, these conditions, where do you break? On-line, off-line?’ I’m like, ‘I don’t know,’ and then he texted me after the race and said, ‘I guess you should’ve braked off-line.’ So, I’m glad he got a good finish, and I didn’t completely ruin the No. 47’s day. But it all worked out in the end.”
Evidently, there wasn’t anyone happier than Hamlin to see Stenhouse Jr. able to survive and thrive after their contact in Chicago. In the end, the No. 47 came home with a P6 finish in the Windy City. While Stenhouse Jr. isn’t going to point his way into the playoffs, it still was an encouraging evening for him.
Meanwhile, Hamlin simply couldn’t get moving on the wet-weather tires in Chicago. While he had some speed when the track was dry, the No. 11 was never really a factor once Mother Nature intervened in Illinois, and the NASCAR veteran ended up finishing P30 on the evening.
Moving forward, Denny Hamlin will be happy to see Pocono on the schedule, as it’s arguably his best race track. He won there in 2023, so perhaps he’ll have a bounce-back weekend after a disappointing time in Chicago.