Kansas left Denny Hamlin with a bittersweet taste in his mouth. On one hand, he must’ve been jubilant considering his driver, Tyler Reddick, in the #45 of 23XI Racing, won the race and qualified for the next round of the NASCAR playoffs. But on the other hand, Hamlin was left frustrated and disappointed, considering he himself as a driver of the #11, ended up in the 2nd place.
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As for which hand was heavier for Hamlin, whether he was happy more as a team owner or distraught more as a driver, he made it clear after the race.
Hamlin revealed that emotionally, it was he, the driver, who was in the driving seat and it was he, the team owner, who was in the backseat.
Denny Hamlin wasn’t happy with Tyler Reddick’s win at Kansas
In a post-race interview, Hamlin admitted that he wasn’t particularly enjoying seeing his driver win the race and qualify for the next round of the playoffs. He described, “I am not enjoying the #45 winning right in this second, for sure. I mean, on Sundays, certainly, I’m a driver first. You know, when it was our first couple (victories), you’re super-excited for them.”
“This one just stings a little bit more for me personally, just having a car dominant at the end and not winning.”
The Joe Gibbs Racing driver claimed that while he was waiting for somebody to cause a caution in the end, he was simply counting down the laps.
Hamlin bottled his shot in the final restart as Reddick took advantage
At the final restart, Hamlin was behind Erik Jones and Kyle Busch while the eventual race-winner Tyler Reddick was behind Daniel Suarez and Joey Logano. As the green flag dropped, Hamlin, instead of getting a good launch and taking advantage of the gaps, blew his chance as he focused more on defending the advances of a hungry Kyle Larson than focusing on his own restart.
This was something that wasn’t lost on Hamlin either. “I’m trying to back up to him because I can’t afford to let him just lag way back and then split us three-wide,” Hamlin said. “So I back up, field goes green and I’m sitting there in no-man’s-land.”
The veteran deemed it as “just a bad scenario”, one which allowed Reddick to take advantage of the gap which he himself wanted to exploit. But in the end, Hamlin judged his 2nd place result as “OK”, and concluded that the last caution wasn’t good for them.
