Ryan Blaney believes Denny Hamlin jumped the final restart on way to victory

Last night Denny Hamlin won the Busch Light Clash with Kyle Busch and Ryan Blaney finishing behind him. However, Blaney felt that Hamlin didn’t get off the final restart cleanly. The NASCAR champion talked about it after the race.

Now, it is just an exhibition but Ryan Blaney wanted to drive from the rear to the front and win this thing. There might not be points, but there is a big trophy and payday for the driver that wins the race.

Denny Hamlin was the pole winner. He got sent further back in the field and then came back up to steal this one from Ty Gibbs. This Busch Light Clash was the best racing we have seen on the Coliseum track, but Blaney thinks Hamlin made an error.

In the postrace press conference, Blaney was asked if he thought Hamlin had jumped the final restart.

“Yeah, by a few feet,” the 2023 champion remarked. “Obviously he kicked my ass on the restart so I’m going to say he jumped, but I thought it was a few feet early. It didn’t make a difference.”

While Blaney believes Hamlin jumped the restart, he also admitted he wasn’t too great on it, either.

“I got a terrible restart on the last one. Probably wouldn’t have won anyway, but came from a long way back, so it was fun. I think every time I’ve been I’ve been spun backwards about two or three times, so it’s not nice to have that one at the last one, so it’s good.”

Denny Hamlin wins pole, wins Busch Light Clash

With such short notice, the NASCAR Cup Series drivers really pulled it together to get this race in last night. California is going to be hit with catastrophic weather over the next couple of days, at least, and it made the decision easy.

When practice got going, it was clear that Toyota was strong as a group. They had three of the fastest times prior to the final group qualifying session.

Denny Hamlin was fastest in practice. Ty Gibbs and Christopher Bell were right there with him in terms of one-lap speed. Then in the final qualifying session, Hamlin took the pole while Gibbs started off P3. Bell would be one of two playoff drivers from 2023 to fail to make the race after qualifying was over.

It wasn’t the cleanest race from Hamlin. He was beat up and pushed back a few times. However, the short track racer he is, Hamlin kept ticking away at it and passing cars. Soon, he found himself battling Gibbs for the lead.

While Gibbs would ultimately spin out and get wrecked, Denny Hamlin held strong. There were two restarts in the final 10 laps, including an overtime green-white-checkered battle to the finish. In the end, it was all Hamlin.