Denny Hamlin won the HighPoint.com 400 at Pocono on Sunday, but his late-race move after a restart on Kyle Larson, which resulted in Larson hitting the wall, had the vast majority of the crowd booing while he was doing his burnout and celebrating the win. Denny Hamlin spoke about the incident with Kyle Larson and defended himself on his podcast called Actions Detrimental via Dirty Mo Media.
“I still contest we did not touch,” Hamlin said on Actions Detrimental. “I know it looks like it, but there's not a ding on the car, not a scratch nowhere on the right side. So from where I was sitting on the left, I mean, I could not, if it was contact, I certainly didn't feel it. It was so small that I certainly didn't feel it in the car. I saw the flaps go up, which happens whenever you get some low pressure, I guess there's high pressure underneath the hood, which happens when you do get close to each other.”
While Larson and Hamlin are good friends, and Larson said he would not let the incident ruin a friendship, it did bother him. He admitted after the race that he might have to start racing Hamlin differently to earn the respect back.
With the current playoff format in NASCAR, it can be a bad thing long-term to make an enemy on track. You do not want that rival to come back and not give you respect in an elimination race.
Hamlin and Larson's interactions on track will be something to monitor next week and for the rest of the season.