One of the big talking points after the Cup race in Nashville was ‘that hit’ Ryan Blaney took into the concrete wall with no safer barriers. This was also a big talking point on the recent episode of Actions Detrimental, the Denny Hamlin podcast on which William Byron was the guest. But as they were talking about the Blaney incident from Nashville, Byron recalled a similar hit he took a few years ago, which went relatively unnoticed.
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This hit came at Auto Club Speedway in 2020, and no, it wasn’t during a race. It was during a test of the Next Gen car. And as painful as that hit must’ve been for Byron, Hamlin recalled how valuable it turned out to be in the greater scheme of things.
Denny Hamlin claims Byron’s 2020 hit was a big step forward in Next Gen safety
Speaking about the Blaney incident from Nashville, Denny Hamlin emphasized how severely painful that impact must’ve been for his fellow driver in the cockpit. “Trust me, as a guy that broke my back hitting a wall with no safer barrier, it stinks for sure,” he said.
This led to William Byron recalling his own incident from 2020 as he said, “I hit the wall, so at California, the Next Gen crash I had was no safer.”
“That was before a lot of changes. I mean, that was really the talking point for us when we were talking about Next Gen,” Hamlin reacted. “It was like, ‘William’s hit in the test. He’s telling us, ‘It hurt.’ So how can we fix this?’ Many slots in the chassis later, we’re getting there. I know Blaney said he’ll pay for it, but hopefully, we don’t need that.
“Jerry from NASCAR, he goes and checks all these racetracks out before and makes sure they’re all safe, but sometimes, something gets slipped through the cracks. I’m sure they’ll have this thing fixed for the next time. Sucks for Blaney, sucks for his team, for sure. But that was an unfortunate hit for sure.”
Ryan Blaney didn’t hide his frustrations with NASCAR after painful hit
While William Byron’s hit went under the radar for the most part, considering it was during a test, in the case of Ryan Blaney, that was certainly not the case. Along with that, the Penske driver didn’t hesitate to spit out his frustrations as to why he had to endure such a massive hit when it could’ve been avoided.
“I’m sure they’ll put one on it after this. It sucks that things like that have to happen, someone hit a wall head-on like that and then you’re like, ‘Oh, we’ll put a SAFER barrier on it now,'” he said as per NBC Sports. “It’s like why are you not doing the whole track? I’ll pay for the (expletive) thing to put it on there.”
So hopefully, with that behind us, NASCAR will double-check and then recheck some more on the safety aspect of the racetracks. Because it’s the Chicago Street race which is up next, and if that course isn’t safe, it could get potentially uglier for drivers than it did for Blaney in Nashville.
