A Ross Chastain-Denny Hamlin Truce? Say It Ain’t So

Ladieeeeees and gentlemen, boys and girls of all ages, it’s that time again.

*loud, frenzied cheering*

We’ve had a fun year here in the NASCAR Thunderdome, haven’t we?

*Loud, sustained hollering*

It all started back on June 6, when Ross “The Melon Man” Chastain locked fenders with Denny “Federal Express” Hamlin at the race track formally known as Gateway.

You liked it.

I liked it.

Denny Hamlin didn’t like it, did he?

*More cheers, someone throw a chair*

More fuel was thrown on the fire in Hotlanta, when Mr. Chastain sent Mr. Hamlin for a spin.

Afterward, Hamlin said he had “reached my peak” when it came to the Trackhouse Racing driver.

Hamlin showed it two races later at Pocono Raceway when he conveniently fenced Chastain into the turn 1 wall on a restart, triggering a wreck and ending Ross Chastain’s day.

Months later at the Busch Light Clash at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, the two found each other again. This time Chastain got in deep into a turn and sent Hamlin around.

Now, as we discovered Monday (March 13), all this transpired after the drivers held a peace summit over breakfast in the immediate aftermath of their initial encounter at World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway.

Hamlin revealed this himself in the latest – and the first must-listen – episode of his podcast, Actions Detrimental.

“He invited me, said ‘Hey, I’d like to meet you in person versus over the phone. Let’s talk about this,’” Hamlin recounted. “I got to really know his upbringing and why he races the way he races versus the way I race because I find it very interesting. We all get brought up very different ways, and we start in different series. …

“It made a lot of sense to me why he’s as aggressive as he is. They always say that you don’t get your values out of thin air, right? You get your values from your parents and the people that you surround yourself around as a kid. …

“And it was very apparent to me that he got pushed around a little bit and the people that he was racing with in the early series, that’s what they did to get wins. They just knocked each other the other way and spun each other and that’s what he saw and that just kind of kept going.”

I wrote about this when this Next Gen Feud for the Next Gen Era first started back in June.

Chastain grew up scrapping for all he…