Denny Hamlin’s controversial move on Kyle Larson at Pocono divided the NASCAR world into two camps, attracting criticism from some for breaking a code, with others seeing it as just another racing move. Recently, while speaking to the media during the Richmond weekend, Team Penske driver Ryan Blaney had the chance to speak about the controversial incident.
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He mentioned how the JGR driver has become quite well-known for performing that same move before as well, elaborating on how his maneuver made sure that Larson was in a bad spot right from the start.
Ryan Blaney comments about Denny Hamlin’s notorious move on Kyle Larson
Speaking about Denny Hamlin, Blaney mentioned, “He’s pretty notorious for doing that move. It’s so backwards to what it used to be with this car compared to the other car. You used to be scared to death being the inside car with a car tight on your right-side door. You’d spin out.”
“And now the advantage is flipped to the inside car. If you get close to the outside car, you make them extremely tight. And you can put guys in bad spots of getting on their left side door pretty early exit of the corner to get them out of position.”
“And then you just lift and turn left and say, ‘Well, I gave him a lane’ when you kind of already had that guy in a bad spot, to begin with.”
Brad Keselowski believes that the problem is with the Next Gen car, not Hamlin
RFK driver-owner Brad Keselowski argued that the primary reason for such aggressive overtakes was because of how the Next Gen cars were built and behaved.
He mentioned, “The car is a tank and people race it like a tank accordingly. So that’s created some different dynamics. And that’s obviously going to put some stress points throughout the season where moves are always kind of blurring up against some kind of ethics line.”
RCR driver Kyle Busch expressed that this form of racing had become prevalent with the newer generations of racing drivers, stating, “There was a way that you can run clean and you can race side by side. But all you’re going to do is draw in the rest of the competition behind you… It’s just a different form of racing, I don’t know whether you call it dirty or whether you call it greedy…”
Yes, maybe Hamlin could have raced him more cleanly. But again, it’s the argument about racing for the win. So looking at the various inputs from several people on the situation, it is both alright and not so ethical from a respectful racing standpoint. But as Bush mentioned, this has become a vicious cycle, and not racing aggressively means that you’d be ceding places to the guys behind.
