Denny Hamlin places blame on Daniel Suárez for wreck involving him and Kyle Larson
Denny Hamlin was charging towards the front at Iowa Speedway, until a spinning Kyle Larson came into his path and threw a wrench into his plans.
The moment stemmed from some contact between Larson and Daniel Suárez on a restart, where Suárez got loose and clipped the No. 5’s left-rear, which in-turn sent Larson into an unsuspecting Hamlin. On the latest episode of his Actions Detrimental podcast, the No. 11 wheelman assessed blame for the incident.
“It was not good, for sure, but it looked like Suárez just moved up too high. He got into the left-rear of the No. 5, and you know, he was three-wide bottom, so usually, the responsibility is on you, to hold your car lower, at that point, and he didn’t, and got into the No. 5 and started it,” Hamlin explained. “So, it’s one of those racing things that happen, especially on the restarts, on a short-track like this. I mean, we were three and four-wide, many times, during these restarts, because everyone is — the track gets cleaned up and has no rubber on it after a caution, so everyone is kind of feeling their car out.
“The car doesn’t have much grip for those first few laps, so there’s opportunities to really pounce and pass during that time. Yeah, the No. 99 just mis-judged his right-front fender, and got the No. 5.”
While Hamlin doesn’t believe it was Larson’s fault, he recognizes the No. 5 was likely the fastest car on the track, and didn’t need to send it three-wide on the restart. That’s the one thing that Hamlin believes is on Larson’s mind in the days following NASCAR’s trip to Iowa.
“That’s probably the only thing that Kyle’s second-guessing,” Hamlin said, regarding Larson putting himself three-wide, when he had the fastest car at Iowa. “You heard him say in his interviews, like you know, ‘I probably could’ve been more patient and not put myself three-wide middle there,’ but he’s trying you know, to get back to the front, as quick as possible. But certainly, you feel like, with as fast as his car was, and he was that day, did he have to go get those two cars right in that corner? Probably not. But that’s hindsight. 90% of the time it works, and you go off and you’re okay and you just gained some spots on the restart. But it’s hard to second-guess that, for sure.
“If you see a gap and an opening, usually you take it, because you don’t think about, ‘Well, this person is likely to mis-judge the corner and run into me.’ Of course, you always have to take into account the people that you’re around, when you do decide to put yourself in a vulnerable spot, but yeah, it’s just one of those things where, certainly the No. 5 team is banging their head up against the hauler door, because they clearly had one of the best, if not the best car, and got a bad finish out of it.”
Alas, Denny Hamlin and Kyle Larson each have three wins on the season, and Daniel Suárez is even locked into the playoffs, so the result could’ve been worse for their dust-up. Still, nobody likes to have their chances of winning ripped away from them, and that’s exactly what happened to Larson on Sunday.