Denny Hamlin continues to be a driving force among opinions in the NASCAR Cup Series. And with his podcast, he has a perfect opportunity to vent some of his frustrations with the ways things go down at the racetrack each week.
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That was no different after Sunday's Hollywood Casino 400 at Kansas. Hamlin was the dominant car for most of Sunday's race, but a late race caution and restart cost him the win.
His frustrations aren't with NASCAR itself, but he did raise concern about how the current restart rules are being used.
Hamlin is more or less upset with how some drivers are getting away with laying back on restarts and how it is bottling up everything and doesn't give everyone a fair shot. Hamlin believes NASCAR's current restart rules are becoming a problem for the sport.
Hamlin voiced those concerns on a new episode of "Actions Detrimental with Denny Hamlin." Hamlin claims NASCAR has to make changes and expects that it will do so.
Should NASCAR do more to discourage 'laying back' on restarts? ✋
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"This is a problem in our series, for sure," Hamlin said. "I want to encourage the fans, look at the aerial video of the final restart. It looks like an ARCA restart. There's cars spread out all over the front stretch. All of that is because somebody started laying back, somebody else started reacting and laying back, they lay back, then the next car laid back. And if you look, there's two rows organized and those were the first two rows of the field. Everyone else was spread way out because everyone's playing these stupid games at the end that's bulls—-."
Hamlin expects NASCAR to finally do something about the issue after Sunday's problems at Kansas. With the Bristol night race on Saturday, doing something about restarts might be a smart thing; Bristol has seen plenty of issues with restarts causing wrecks that happen at the beginning of a 500-lap race.
Hamlin talked about how NASCAR has told drivers to stop "laying back," but he also sent a message that it is far past time that the sport actually step in and do something about it.
"NASCAR has said, 'Stop laying back.' They've said it, but they haven't done anything about it yet," Hamlin said. "I would suspect, this week, that they do address it. ... It's just starting to become a trend where these guys are laying way back and they're getting a run."
NASCAR seems to listen to Hamlin about a lot of things. Will they actually step in? Or is Hamlin just being a hypocrite again? (As if he's never pulled the same crap.) The sport's trending in the wrong direction when it comes to some decision-making.
Hamlin is right about one thing: The only way to end a problem is for NASCAR to step in and put a stop to it.
