The pit wall at World Wide Technology Raceway felt particularly narrow this past weekend. Eleven cars were involved in a pileup at the end of Stage 1 in the O’Reilly Series, making the situation especially scary with crew members quite literally walking around nearby. Although no one was injured, Denny Hamlin highlighted just how risky the whole thing was after his race on Sunday.
Hamlin felt he came close to injuring one of his crew members while pitting and told Frontstretch that he would advocate for removing the wall.
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“Remove this wall; it’s way too tight. I mean, remember in my opinion is a bad place for them to be pitting. And I just think that even if it’s a temporary wall. I believe they need to knock this pit wall down and move it. Give these pit guys a little bit of room because, I mean, I’m nearly rolling over the ankles of the guy who’s changing tires in front. If we’re too wide, it’s just it’s. This is a dangerous spirit for sure,” the No. 11 driver said to Frontstretch.
While Hamlin came close to hurting a member of his crew as they worked on the right side of the car, he believes there isn’t enough space for pit crews to make stops safely. When changing the right-side tires, pit crew members are almost in the way of cars coming into or out of their pit boxes, making their jobs risky and unsafe to an extent. What happened in the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series race on Saturday was clear proof of that.
Denny Hamlin’s championship fight is heating up, and the drama at Gateway proved there’s always something brewing. Subscribe for more interesting stories.
The incident saw Rajah Caruth’s car spin sideways, with Nick Sanchez’s car hitting the right rear of Brent Crews’ No. 19 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota as the crew prepared to change tires. Tire carrier Brad Donaghy saw the fresh tire knocked from his hands in the collision and was lucky to escape without injury. Rear tire changer Bryan Backus and jackman Matt Wilps were also hit by Sanchez’s sliding car but somehow managed to finish the pit stop without getting hurt.
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All cars run under the pit-limiter speed, yet when William Sawalich checked up after overshooting his pit box, Caruth had to check up too, and those behind the Junior Motorsports driver didn’t slow down enough. Sanchez’s car came within inches of Brent Crews’ pit crew, and even after watching multiple replays of the incident from every angle, fans will feel like the crew members got lucky.
But luck doesn’t work out every time, which is why Hamlin was calling for the pit wall to be moved ten feet. What that would do is create more than two lines, meaning more room for cars coming in and cars going out of their pit boxes while no crew member is exceedingly close to the pit lane itself.
While the pit wall itself didn’t cause any issues during the Cup Series race, there was another glaring issue at the Gateway: brake rotors burning up and failing.
Zane Smith, Ryan Blaney, Noah Gragson, Chris Buescher, and Chase Elliott were the ones who suffered issues with their brake rotors overheating. While it looks like it was a Ford issue, Elliott’s name — he drives a Chevrolet — in that list makes it clear that it wasn’t just the blue oval that had a problem.
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A total of 18 cautions plagued the race at World Wide Technology Raceway, and with several laps spent under caution and under the red flag, Hamlin believes any more cautions would have caused more such failures.
“It was getting hot when they stopped us, and I truthfully think that those red flags would cause more rotors to blow because it’s like a rotor’s heat soak with a car sitting there, no air going through it,” said Hamlin in the same interview. So I was glad they at least got going quick, but stopping didn’t help to break the situation there.”
Hamlin didn’t have a particularly good race, although he finished 9th and picked up 33 points to maintain his position as the Championship leader.
The No. 11 JGR Toyota driver believed that his car wasn’t good, and on pit stops his team was able to help him make the car better for short runs, but those didn’t make any difference during the multiple restarts, and Hamlin believed he got swallowed up and lost positions on every restart.
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Hamlin admitted that he felt blessed to still be the Championship leader.
After Larson picked up his first win since Kansas 2025 and 73 points to go with that win, the No. 5 HMS Chevrolet driver is now second in points, just 9 points shy of Denny Hamlin going into Bristol Motor Speedway, a track at which both Larson and Hamlin have enjoyed great success.
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The post “Nearly Rolling Over The Ankles Of The Guy”- Denny Hamlin Drops Fiery Track Safety Demand After Gateway’s Near-Disaster appeared first on EssentiallySports. Add EssentiallySports as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
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