Denny Hamlin 'tired of running fuel mileage' races after Brickyard 400

Denny Hamlin sounded off on the Brickyard 400 being challenging due to having to save on fuel throughout the race. On the Actions Detrimental podcast, the 43-year-old NASCAR star revealed that he “ran hard” on 25 of the 160 laps at the Indy Cup Series race.

“I’m so tired of running fuel mileage races where we’re all running half-throttle,” Hamlin said. “I wish we could do something about it, but it’s like… I don’t know, it helps you sometimes, it hurts you sometimes. I just think for the racing’s sake, man do we really want NBC to have to sit here and explain all these different things and fuel? Don’t you want to see us out there racing and you know that hey that car out front, he got to the lead because he’s the fastest car or whatever?

“He’s like no, don’t even look at this guy, look at the guy back in 12th. That’s the guy you should be paying attention to. Well, he’s doing a great job explaining what’s happening, but can we stop that from happening somehow where it’s like fuel mileage races?

Hamlin got off to a strong start at the Brickyard 400, winning the first stage and finishing third in Stage 2. But due to an wreck he was involved in during the third stage of the race, Hamlin earned a P32 finish on Sunday.

Denny Hamlin weighs in on Ryan Blaney’s outburst during Brickyard 400

Kyle Larson won the Brickyard 400, but Ryan Blaney felt like he had an opportunty to win after Larson passed him after a overtime restart. Balney expressed his anger after the incident, and Hamlin doesn’t blame him.

“The 12 was in position to win the race and then he obviously lost his sh*t when he saw that the 5 pulled up and then not only pulled up, but they left the same timeish and the 5 cleared him in Turn 1. It was an unhinged moment which was so deservingly so,” Hamlin said. “This is one where you gotta give Blaney a bye on this one because he goes from controlling the race to not only not controlling the race… when the 6 pulls off to then relinquishing the spot that he had.

“He goes from second to still second and now we got a new player in the game. It was very unfortunate for the 12 that the 5 got the inside lane there. I mean what do you do about it? I’m not sure. I think that the 6 could have not pulled off in a more worse time. I don’t know how the 6 thought they were gonna make it anyway. Again, if we didn’t have these stupid fu*king fuel mileage races, we wouldn’t have this problem.”

On3’s Nick Geddes contributed to this story.