Kevin Harvick weighs in on Denny Hamlin wrecking Austin Dillon

There weren’t a ton of incidents at COTA over the weekend, but one of the wrecks that drew some scrutiny involved Denny Hamlin, the driver of the No. 11 car.

Hamlin wiped out Austin Dillon going into a turn, and the in-car camera offered few clues on what happened.

Based on the in-car camera, it certainly looked like Hamlin got into the gas and stayed there as he plowed through Dillon’s car on the turn. A closer review revealed a different story, though.

“I think we were all a little unclear on how they were actually officiating the race through the esses,” Kevin Harvick said on the Kevin Harvick’s Happy Hour podcast. “Apparently Turn 6 became not part of the esses anymore. So what started happening throughout the day is all that dirt from the grass that they drove through when everybody realized they could cut Turn 6… the grass, as the corner would come around, the grass kind of stuck out here, so you had to go through the grass. And that dirt started blowing all over the racetrack.

“As they went to the inside of the racetrack all that dirt blew (into) what was the normal groove. And I think when Denny had a little too much speed and he got in the dirt, it was just super dirty out there and he lost it.”

That was Denny Hamlin’s explanation of the wreck with Dillon as well. He even noted that he apologized to Dillon after the race, saying it was on him for not realizing the circumstances better.

Of course, Hamlin was having a rough go of things anyway.

“He’d already lost his fender in Lap 1, so he got his fender cleaned out after the 9 (Chase Elliott) and everybody else, Ross (Chastain) pushed everybody up the racetrack,” Harvick said. “And then the 87 (Connor Zilisch) jumped over the right-front fender of the 11 and knocked the fender off.”

Denny Hamlin would finish P21 at COTA, another disappointing finish in a season that has had a handful of them already.

He also may have impacted the race outcome at COTA, throwing the race into caution with Kyle Busch sporting a decently large lead with only a few laps to go. Busch wound up falling out of the lead.

“It was no given that Kyle was going to win,” Denny Hamlin said. “I hated it because Kyle just did an awesome job all day long leading the race. We ended up having a great race anyway, but it was certainly a caution he didn’t want to see, either.”