Certain statements made in the heat of the moment can be misinterpreted by fans and those in the media. It’s not that uncommon in sports and NASCAR is no different. The latest driver to fall victim to this is veteran Denny Hamlin.
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After the race at Kansas, when a reporter asked him what his mentality was going into Talladega, the 43-year-old said that he was mentally not in it. This sparked a conversation online that he did not have the mental fortitude to be in the sport anymore but the #11 recently cleared it all up.
Hamlin did not have the best day in Kansas. A P8 finish is decent but he could have gotten a lot further with the car he had. So when the race ended and he got out of his car, there was disappointment and frustration in his mind. At the time, he was not thinking about Talladega but what he could have done to finish higher up in Kansas. That doesn’t mean the veteran doesn’t care about the upcoming Cup Series races at all.
“Every reporter asks the same f**king question after the race. “Where’s your mentality heading into ‘Dega now?” Like I don’t know. I don’t think about ‘Dega till f**king Monday or Tuesday. I’m in the moment, in this bubble and I’m trying to make sense of my day and how did the result turn out and what could we have done better,” he explained on his podcast.
The next couple of races are at unpredictable tracks but Hamlin is fifth on the table, 11 points ahead of the cutline. The veteran just needs to keep his calm, especially at Talladega, and do what he does best. But a bad day could quickly turn the tide of things and put him under pressure once in Charlotte.
Hamlin rues about missing out on a win at Kansas
Hamlin believes that he should have finished much higher up than he did at Kansas. JGR did a great job to make the #11 as quick as possible but it just was not to be their day. The veteran race car driver regrets that he never got to show anyone just how fast they could be under racing conditions. Had he executed that properly, he would have been in a much more advantageous position points-wise. He might have won the race as well.
“I had a few good restarts and our car was fast. I hate we never got to show how fast our car was. It probably caught people off-guard to say, “Wow you thought you had a winning car.” Hell yeah, look at the lap times. Once we got strung out there, we were the fastest car by a lot,” he added.
Hamlin will hope that he gets this kind of a car for the Talladega race but it will be his job to execute properly this time. Speedway races are unpredictable, but the #11 driver is a veteran of the sport who has been successful there multiple times.
