Denny Hamlin breaks down Kyle Larson's collision with pit road water barrels at Homestead-Miami

Denny Hamlin took some time after Homestead-Miami to break down Kyle Larson‘s incident, where he bashed into the pit road water barrels and ended his afternoon.

Coming off a victory at Las Vegas, many believed Larson would take a mulligan at Homestead. Instead, he wanted the win and then some, and was trailing only Ryan Blaney when he entered pit road at a pivotal juncture in the race.

Unfortunately, Larson attempted to make up some ground entering pit road, and it went about as bad as it could go, as Larson swerved to avoid Blaney, and crashed into the water barrels at the onset of pit road.

“Kyle was definitely strong. I don’t know that he was as strong as he was last race here, but he still probably, out-front, certainly, he was the best car, because he could run the wall obviously, a little better than everyone else. But he still was fast. He still, he got around us, midway through a run, and that’s when he started chasing [Ryan] Blaney back down, and kind of got stuck right behind him. Blaney was running the wall just good enough to like, keep Kyle at bay, and he was also fast enough up there where Kyle wasn’t going to get around him on the bottom,” Hamlin explained, via Actions Detrimental. “So Kyle, you could definitely see that he thought, ‘I need to make up positions — I need to make up gap right here.’ So he sees the No. 12 pitting. They pit. Same lap, same everything. I’m just far enough behind this that I see them peel off. So I’m probably a few, probably three seconds, four seconds behind, at this point. I’ve banged the wall a couple good times. It’s costing me a couple of seconds per lap. I’m just trying to figure this thing out. I’m trying to learn on the fly, and get better at it.

“I watch him go down there, and next thing I know, all I saw it just the sand. Immediately, I’m thinking, ‘Oh, I hope no one hit that head on.’ Like, at first I was like, ‘Is everyone alright?’ Like, I didn’t know what caused it. … I mean, he kept going. So it didn’t look like it was crazy. Even his car didn’t look terrible.”

Alas, Hamlin attempted to make some sense of what was going through Larson’s mind, elaborating on how the Hendrick star’s day came to a shocking end.

“So when I looked at it, the incident, and reviewed it, I’m thinking, my thoughts were that Blaney has the lead, and Blaney’s doing what he needs to do to keep the lead, and that’s not making a mistake. He’s trying to be, I’m not even going to say conservative, I think he was being modestly conservative, but he was at pit road speed. He was going to be fine. He was not going to speed on pit road. Can’t not speed on pit road. He was doing what he needed to do to come out the leader, out of that cycle,” Hamlin added. “Kyle had the opposite approach. ‘Okay, I need to get more here.’ So he broke, he let off the break, he got to the apron and then he kind of went again. Whether that’s releasing the break, or gassing it up again, he lunged to try and close that gap.

“Now let’s just pretend the barriers weren’t there, and let’s pretend Blaney wasn’t there, Kyle was absolutely going to be speeding. I don’t see any way around that.”

Denny Hamlin makes some salient points. Kyle Larson has to be thinking he’s pretty happy to be locked into the Championship 4, or it would’ve hurt his psyche much more than some broken water barrels after Homestead.