1. In Defense of Denny Hamlin
We’re not talking about Denny Hamlin the owner here, though we’ll get to him shortly.
The 20/20 hindsight crowd is out in full force for Hamlin the driver, calling the strategy used by his No. 11 team at Atlanta “dismal,” along with other unkind adjectives.
In case you missed it, Hamlin was already slow in qualifying, then intentionally didn’t push things for most of the race. He suggested during his post-race comments that since Atlanta races more like a superspeedway now, his drafting sense was tingling and he wanted to avoid any big wrecks.
Alas, the race played out without The Big One, a la Daytona International Speedway and Talladega Superspeedway, and Hamlin instead got caught up in a more conventional incident, which is a risk when you purposefully run around cars you generally outclass.
Though this tactic would have been unthinkable at Atlanta prior to its 2021 repave and reconfiguration, it’s not like Hamlin never tried this before. It worked out just fine for him (and others) at Talladega in 2016, for sure.
And so to flip Marc Antony’s famous speech from Julius Caesar around, we come not to bury Denny, but to praise him. He’s famously never won a NASCAR Cup Series championship despite his status as a top star and perennial contender. Hamlin has banged his head on this particular door time and time again without finding a way to open it.
Why wouldn’t he, of all drivers, just say “screw it” and go with a hunch? Sure it could backfire, as he’s just two points above the first-round playoff cut line and has no real margin for error over the next two races.
But doing things the conventional way hasn’t worked for him either, so it’s hard to criticize him too much for trying this. One thing’s for sure: he’s definitely not going to be moping around and regretful just because his Atlanta gambit didn’t go the way he hoped.
2. Hamlin, MJ Are Calling NASCAR’s Bluff
As it turns out, Hamlin was also a major figure in the big off-track NASCAR story of the past few days, when 23XI Racing announced that it was ignoring NASCAR’s Friday night deadline to sign the charter deal. Except for one more holdout, Front Row Motorsports, every other team agreed to the proposal dictating the terms of the charter system for the next seven Cup Series seasons (2025-2031).
Hamlin was somewhat quiet on the matter over the race weekend, but the statement released by the…
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