Denny Hamlin doesn’t mince words. When Joe Gibbs Racing teammate—and team owner Joe Gibbs’ grandson—Ty Gibbs seemingly intentionally held up Hamlin and teammate Christopher Bell from getting past the younger Gibbs about one-third of the way through Sunday’s NASCAR Cup playoff race at New Hampshire, Hamlin let out some choice words on the team radio.
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“Don’t you know we’re racing for a championship? What the f**k,” Hamlin quipped to the younger Gibbs. But the No. 54 driver either didn’t hear Hamlin or didn’t care, as he stayed the course, continuing to block his two older teammates.
That was enough for Hamlin, who carefully—but also purposefully—nudged and spun Gibbs around and into the wall on Lap 147. End result: Conversation over. Passing issue over. Gibbs’ day over, as well.
Later, Hamlin went back on his team radio and had this brief exchange with crew chief Chris Gayle:
“Are they afraid to talk to him?” Hamlin said of Joe Gibbs not talking to his grandson. “That’s what I feel like. They’re just scared of him.”
To which Gayle said calmly, “I don’t know the answer to that right now. We’ll talk about it after, I promise.”
After the race, Hamlin appeared to have calmed down somewhat. However, the look on his face gave away that he was still angry.
“It’s super unfortunate there,” Hamlin said. “He got spun there, and obviously, the contact came from us. I don’t have any other comment other than that. Just had some contact into [turn] one, and obviously it was a really rough race before that. We’ll work through it and all, but we’ll see how it goes. Honestly, it’s unfortunate that the contact happened.”
The younger Gibbs, on the other hand, refused to directly address the incident. When interviewed about the incident after the race on USA TV, his response was anything but an answer.
“Yeah, it’s unfortunate, but I’m excited to go racing next week and I’m looking forward to it,” Gibbs said.
When pressed again if there will be any further discussion within JGR’s team headquarters during Monday’s usual post-race debrief meetings, a very uncomfortable looking Gibbs again refused to bend from his previous party line, saying simply, “Yeah, we’ll have a good race next week and we’re looking forward to it.”
Hamlin has a valid point. He and Bell were coming up on the rear of Gibbs’ car, who was running 11th at the time. Hamlin and Bell were trying to get past so they could get back into the top 10, but Gibbs was acting as if he was fighting for the championship—when in reality, he wasn’t even fighting for the race win.
For the record, Gibbs, who turns 23 on Oct. 4, remains winless during his three-year Cup career.
While Hamlin may have won the battle by spinning his young teammate, and likely making it a teaching moment for Gibbs, the overall war could be impacted by Gibbs’ immature strategy behind the wheel. Instead of blocking someone on an opposing team that’s also in the playoffs,
Ironically, Hamlin finished 12th, while Bell finished sixth and the other JGR playoff driver, Chase Briscoe, finished 10th.
Hamlin rarely lets himself get riled by on-track incidents. But later in the race on the last restart, he struggled—and actually dropped backward from what should have easily been a top 10 finish, if not potentially wind up being a top five—but instead ended up as the lowest-finishing JGR playoff driver there was.
“It’s just a bad restart on my part,” Hamlin said. “I just couldn’t get going on the bottom lane. Every time I started on the bottom, I couldn’t get anything going. Obviously, it cost us some positions from where we probably would have finished. We just have to get a little better. Certainly, we didn’t come here with our best. We have to get a little faster, get the handling better, and our guys certainly have to do a better job.”
And Grandpa Joe needs to have a talk with his grandson about respecting his elders, particularly those who are his teammates and who are trying to win the organization yet another championship.
