Denny Hamlin, William Byron weigh in on SAFER barriers, Next Gen car safety

William Byron joined Denny Hamlin’s “Actions Detrimental” podcast Monday to discuss Next Gen car safety after Ryan Blaney’s head-on collision into the inside non-SAFER barrier wall during this past Sunday’s Ally 400 at Nashville Superspeedway.

Hamlin, who suffered a compression fracture in his lower back in a last-lap crash at Fontana in 2013, understood Blaney’s frustration with NASCAR for having a non-SAFER barrier wall at Nashville.

“Trust me, as a guy that broke my back hitting a wall with no safer barrier, it stinks for sure,” Hamlin said, via Shaharyar of The SportsRush.

Byron recalled a similar accident he had in the Next Gen car, albeit his didn’t take place during a race. Byron hit the wall during a Next Gen car test in 2020, a crash he said was “no safer.”

“I hit the wall, so at California, the Next Gen crash I had was no safer,” Byron said.

Hamlin added: “That was before a lot of changes,” Hamlin said. “I mean, that was really the talking point for us when we were talking about Next Gen. It was like, ‘William’s hit in the test. He’s telling us it hurt. So how can we fix this?’ Many slots in the chassis later, we’re getting there. I know Blaney said he’ll pay for it, but hopefully, we don’t need that.

“Jerry from NASCAR, he goes and checks all these racetracks out before and makes sure they’re all safe. But sometimes, something gets slipped through the cracks. I’m sure they’ll have this thing fixed for the next time. Sucks for Blaney, sucks for his team, for sure. But that was an unfortunate hit for sure.”

Ryan Blaney gives health update after hard crash into non-SAFER barrier wall at Nashville

Blaney provided an update on his recovery during a Tuesday appearance on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.

“Not something I would personally like to do again, but luckily I was able to get checked out,” Blaney said. “… Looking forward to getting back after it this week. I’ve recovered pretty good, you know I thought we did a really good job interior wise of our car. We worked really hard on kind of making sure we do all we can to make sure we’re as secure as possible. We’ve made a bunch of changes honestly the last couple years, year-and-a-half to seat positions, belts, head foam, footboards all that stuff that really kind of came in to factor and making sure I was as good as I could be inside there.”

Blaney, who hit the wall nose first, called out NASCAR for not having a SAFER barrier on the wall which tore up his No. 12 Ford.

“I don’t really know what happened,” Blaney said. “Someone checked up on the restart, I guess, and I kind of checked up and got hit from behind. I didn’t know if they were wrecking, and just couldn’t get it straightened out when I got out of the grass. I thought I was going to come back around, and that I’d be OK. But it just never got back right, and I don’t know why there’s no safer barrier there.

“That’s pretty ridiculous, honestly — hardest hit I’ve ever had in my life, so happy to be all right. It sucks for the Pennzoil Ford Mustang. Stinks to go home early.”