Dale Earnhardt Jr. reviewed Denny Hamlin’s controversial race-winning restart from Richmond, and he’s giving his thoughts on the matter.
On the latest episode of The Dale Jr. , where last weekend’s victor at Richmond joined the show for a bit, Earnhardt Jr. relented that Hamlin got away with a win during the Toyota Owners 400, but he’s certainly not lambasting the veteran for it.
“The question for me now is, I’m fine. You got away with one,” Earnhardt Jr. told Hamlin. “You’ve got to try to do everything you can. I mean, if you take every — maybe not these cars, but over the past 50 years in NASCAR, if you really wanted to take all the cars back to the R&D Center, you could find something. There’s something, on all of the cars that have ever raced a race, that aren’t going to be you know, pass perfect technical inspection.
“So I mean, we’ve been pushing the limits, and you’ve got to push the limits as a driver. What does NASCAR need to do now? That’s my biggest question.”
Evidently, Earnhardt Jr. believes Hamlin’s win was all well and good, but the NASCAR Hall of Famer is concerned with how the sport will react to the situation moving forward.
“You and me been doing this a long time, and we would have situations like this, where the drivers sort of would discover a loophole, right? The drivers would take advantage or abuse a certain situation,” Earnhardt Jr. added. “And most of the time, NASCAR would then come back and say, you know at the next drivers meeting or whatever, ‘Alright guys, this is what we want going forward.’ Do you think NASCAR needs to say anything? Do you think NASCAR needs to clarify, or make it understood? Because, alright for me, all of these years, I always thought you had to go in the box. After what happened the other night, and the conversation with NASCAR, now it seems like it’s a little loose.
“You know, there’s not, it’s not — the zone is just a suggestion, right? Does NASCAR need to come in and say anything? Cause I know, maybe you might not ask the question at the drivers meeting, but you know there’s five or 10 drivers going, ‘Okay, well, what’s the deal?’ You know, are we going to be able to, you know, bend it a little bit in those scenarios or those situations.”
Alas, Dale Earnhardt Jr. isn’t giving Denny Hamlin too much grief over his move, but he recognizes that it could have major ramifications. We’ll see how NASCAR decides to pivot to ensure it doesn’t happen again in the future.
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