Kyle Petty continues to rip Denny Hamlin after Atlanta

Kyle Petty further criticized Denny Hamlin’s strategy in Sunday’s playoff opener at Atlanta during his race recap for NASCAR.com.

Petty, who took aim at Hamlin on the USA Network broadcast after the race for riding around the back of the field for the entirety of the race with a goal of picking up 20 points, said Monday that Hamlin and his team “have worked themselves into a hole” by implementing the strategy they did at Atlanta.

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“I don’t know what happened to Denny yesterday,” Petty said. “Don’t know if he’s spotting him a race. I don’t know what he’s trying to do. And I can’t get into that because I don’t know the strategy. But their strategy did not work yesterday, let me say that. And they lose eight points. These guys have worked themselves into a hole.

“… This is a point system that it’s easy to lose, hard to gain these points back. Three-race stretch, you have the bad first race, you’re playing catch up in the next two.”

Hamlin, who started from the rear of the field after experiencing an engine issue in Saturday’s qualifying session, anticipated there being a multitude of wrecks, and wanted to stay out of trouble. Petty found Hamlin’s conservative strategy to be perplexing.

“Who goes into the playoffs saying, ‘I want to get 20 points in the first race?’ I’ve never heard anything like that in all the history of when we’ve had playoffs, ‘I just want to get 20 race points, I’m gonna ride back here.’ So, I’m more confused now than I was before I heard him speak,” Petty said after the race.

Denny Hamlin responds to Kyle Petty’s criticism of his Atlanta strategy

The wrecks Hamlin imagined would happen didn’t come to pass. That is, until the last lap of the race. Hamlin, however, found himself involved. Collect 20 points he did not. Hamlin finished P24 and is now just two points clear above the cutline.

Hamlin responded to Petty’s criticism on Monday’s “Actions Detrimental” podcast. He explained it was the strategy he “wanted to employ on the day” before expressing confidence going into Watkins Glen and Bristol before the playoff field cuts down from 16 to 12.

“I think teams are smarter now than they used to be and certainly, not saying that this was the right strategy, but it was the one that I wanted to employ on the day,” Hamlin said. “If 20 points — I don’t know the last time I scored 20 points on a superspeedway race. It’s been so long. I know that still there’s some things that can happen, but I feel like the next two tracks, tires are gonna be a big thing. At Watkins Glen, we’ve got a new tire that’s got seconds of fall off apparently and if that’s the case, then you could be on the good end or the bad end of that.

“Then you got Bristol; we don’t know whether we’re gonna have a race like the spring or a race like the fall. Either way, we won those two races. So, again, if I can just hold myself above water going to Bristol, I feel very confident we’re gonna go out there and perform well.”