Denny Hamlin had a great race at Chicagoland. Pole position, clean run, third-place finish. He could have gone through his podcast talking about that. Instead, he let his intrusive thoughts win, and the topic was self-policing. Here is how he put it on the latest episode of his Action Detrimental podcast.
“If you can’t punch someone in the face without getting a fine, and they always keep you separated, security’s in there, the teams get involved, if you can’t handle it off the racetrack, then you’ve got to let people self-police on the racetrack.”
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The incident that set him off happened right in front of him. On Lap 47, Shane van Gisbergen drove straight into Austin Hill and sent him into the wall. It was a message. The two had a past motive. At Pocono, Hill squeezed Shane Van Gisbergen into the wall during a three-wide battle.
Two weeks later at San Diego, Hill missed a corner on a restart, triggered a pileup, and destroyed SVG’s car on a day he was the favorite to win. NASCAR did nothing. So SVG did something.
At Chicagoland, he waited until they were both buried in traffic battling for 28th, then drove into Turn 3 and hit Hill’s left-rear. Hill’s day was done and SVG made his point.
Denny Hamlin understands; he just does not love how it played out. What he actually wants is simple. Do not touch anyone during the race. Once it is over, walk over to their pit box and handle it face to face. Talk it out, get heated, do whatever, but do it on the ground, not at speed.
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His logic is that a driver who knows a confrontation is waiting for them after the checkered flag will think twice before wrecking someone in the first place. Right now, that accountability isn’t there. Security does come on the scene, teams get in the way, and nothing else happens. So it gets brought back to the track the following week, in a 1,500-kilogram car.
This is not a new argument from Denny Hamlin. Back in 2015, when Matt Kenseth deliberately wrecked Joey Logano at Martinsville, NASCAR suspended Kenseth. Hamlin publicly defended the move. NASCAR.com covered it, the piece was titled “Hamlin: Kenseth simply upholding ‘driver’s code.’” His quote then holds up word for word today:
“There’s an unspoken driver code… I feel like the driver code that’s been established since racing began 100 years ago is more compromised now than ever.”
That code is real. It is not written anywhere, but every veteran in the garage knows it. You bump me, I can bump you back. You wreck me, I wreck you. But you do not put someone in the wall under caution.
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You do not blow up someone’s race over nothing. Give and take. Proportional. That is the deal. Hamlin’s problem is that the new generation, driving tougher cars in a format that rewards recklessness, has stopped honoring it.
He finished third at Chicagoland and leads the Cup Series standings. The anger, though? That was not about his day.
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