“They Deserve Better”: Denny Hamlin Claims Tyler Reddick’s Michigan Rant Justified but Insists “It’s a Process”

Tyler Reddick was not a happy man towards the end of the race at Michigan. Reddick came in for a pit stop late in the race and moments later, he found his right rear loose, nearly spun out, went back to the pits, and ended up finishing in 30th instead of what looked like a 2nd win of the season for him. This resulted in an explosive rant on the radio in which the #45 driver didn’t hold back, which his boss Denny Hamlin believed was justified.

“You didn’t even look at it! Didn’t even check it! F*cking bullshit! Unacceptable,” Reddick was heard ranting on his radio after the massive error cost him the race win.

Hamlin, who later spoke about Reddick’s rant and 23XI pit crew woes, accepted that they’ve got to do better as a team, that they’ve let Reddick down many times, and that they are working on solving the issue.

Denny Hamlin believes Tyler Reddick’s rant was justified

Speaking in a recent episode of the Actions Detrimental podcast, Hamlin claimed they started early in the morning and discussed their pit crew woes at 23XI Racing. He described, “We got a long discussion what our long-term pit crew planning is. Do we expand? Do we get more personnel? Do we hire more than 3 pit crews and we outsource 1 to another team to let us continue to build our roster and hone our stuff?”

“We figured at Gibbs, that we would probably get the 5th and 6th best team. That just made sense for Gibbs but it didn’t make sense for us because we feel like we have race-winning cars. But it is a process, it takes time.”

Hamlin then touched upon Reddick’s rant, conceding that his driver has all the right to be as mad as he was. “Tyler Reddick has absolutely, 100%, the right to be as angry, frustrated as he is. We have let him down more times than we have brought him up and we have got to do a better job at that. It’s frustrating. Trust me,” he explained.

“They deserve better than what they’re getting right now. But I can assure you the guys working at the shop on it and trying to figure out how to get better.”

Reddick claims they haven’t had many races this year which were ‘mistake-free’

Stating the obvious which Hamlin mentioned on his podcast, Reddick also claimed that they’ve “definitely got to better” in that department considering they’ve repeatedly made the same mistake.

“We’ve run through the majority of our season and still can just barely count on one hand the amount of races that went mistake-free,” Reddick said as per NASCAR.  The #45 driver admitted to his own wrongdoings too in the racecar, claiming he has made “some pretty bad mistakes” too which have cost them the wins.

But it remains frustrating nevertheless to “see them get away.”