On Sunday, Denny Hamlin and his Toyota comrades appeared to be under a solid strategy at the Talladega Superspeedway when they made the final pit stop with 25 laps to go, the earliest among the manufacturers. Hamlin exited the pit road and began a race to slice through slower traffic along with the others. Things were going well for Team Toyota until it came upon Ross Chastain.
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The Trackhouse Racing driver threw a block on Hamlin, slowing him and the other cars behind him. The move halted the momentum that the Toyotas had and nullified whatever chance they had of catching up to the Chevrolets and Fords ahead of them.
After the race, Hamlin expressed his frustration to the media and kept it going in front of the mic on Actions Detrimental. He said, “He’s trying to get you to check up and cause chaos. Get you tagged from behind and just cause chaos.” Hamlin believes that Chastain had no business trying to make a block on him with his slower car.
He used the blend-line rule that NASCAR uses to control drivers from exiting the pit road and merging with the traffic at high speeds to make his case. Chastain was a lot slower than him at that moment and created an unsafe environment that could have easily led to a chaotic accident. Fortunately, such a scenario was prevented.
Nevertheless, the key question he had was if someone can be black-flagged for forcing a fellow driver below the yellow line to keep a position, why was a guy with a slower car intentionally blocking faster cars despite the risk of inducing a wreck being let go from punishment? Former crew chief Steve Letarte had an answer for him.
Steve Letarte explains why Chastain did nothing wrong
Letarte broke down the race with Jeff Burton on Inside The Race and provided his opinion on why Chastain was right to throw the controversial block.
He said, “That’s exactly what you should do. That’s the defensive move; nobody wrecked. I’m sure Denny’s not happy with him, but I’m sure Denny would have done the same thing if he were in Ross’ spot.”
“So, I’m okay with it, but that, I think, is what derailed the Toyota strategy.” Hamlin had also noted on the podcast that if the roles were reversed, Chastain would have just run into him as he should and resolved himself of any blame. He made it clear that he wasn’t a fan of such racing methods.
More than anything, he was downtrodden over the fact that the Toyotas couldn’t challenge for the win in the final laps despite having the caliber to do so. Team Penske’s Austin Cindric went on to reach Victory Lane with Kyle Larson finishing as the runner-up.
