Denny Hamlin reacts to Joey Logano, Team Penske buying tires from Cody Ware No. 51 team

Joey Logano had to start from the rear of the field in last Saturday’s NASCAR Cup Series race at Richmond Raceway. Logano hit the outside wall in Turn 4 during practice after having a right front tire go down.

Teams were permitted to have eight sets of tires for Saturday’s race. Rather than race one set short, Team Penske and the No. 22 team paid Rick Ware Racing and the No. 51 team to acquire a set. Denny Hamlin reacted to the move on his “Actions Detrimental” podcast.

“I don’t have an opinion on that, one way or the other. My question is… did the 51 just run a set short? … I wonder how much Penske paid them for that. They obviously paid them, [and] Rick Ware obviously took it,” Hamlin said. “I guess there’s a rule that you do have to make a qualifying attempt if you choose to transfer over. What that does is it keeps you from [having an extra set of fresh tires]. We’ve seen in the Xfinity Series and in other series over time, years ago, when people knew they had to start in the back anyway, they would just not even make a run and actually have fresher tires and drive straight to the front because people would start on their qualifying tires. We don’t start on our qualifying tires anymore, but it keeps them from starting from the back and being at an advantage.

“So, it sounds like the 22 wanted the same set of tires as everyone else, so he had to buy the tires off the 51 and then the 51 — sorry, here’s a check and you’re going to be one set short. Do I have a problem with it? I don’t know. As long as there’s someone in the field to sell it. Certainly, the issue they had in practice didn’t appear it was their fault. It was bad luck, they ran over something. Should they have been penalized by having one less set of tires? I don’t think so. It’s probably the most fair way to do it.”

Joey Logano grinds his way to top 5 finish at Richmond

Logano had a tough start to his weekend at Richmond. He finished it off with an impressive fourth-place finish. The reigning Cup champion appears to be rounding into form ahead of the playoffs, a scary sight for rival teams.

“We had a really fast Mustang,” Logano said after the race. “The car had a lot of speed in it, but we just had to overcome too much. We got up into contention, and then we had a flat right rear and lost all of it again, and then steadily grind your way back into the top five. Apparently, I needed maybe 500 or 600 laps. It’s just not our weekend.

“We had a flat tire in practice and then another flat tire in the race and both of them were punctures. It’s not like we were being too aggressive or anything like that, it’s just running over crap on the racetrack. Not our weekend.”