Denny Hamlin shares his stance on on-track payback from Corey Heim in NASCAR Truck Series Championship
Denny Hamlin has shared his official stance on Corey Heim delivering some payback to Carson Hocevar at the end of the Truck Series finale.
While Hamlin explained that normally, he would completely be on Heim’s side, the circumstances of the race certainly give him some pause.
“I’m so torn on it. Only because I think what happened to Corey was so wrong. I think in general, what Corey did was wrong. It wasn’t wrong, except for in that situation,” Hamlin explained, via Actions Detrimental. “It’s the end of the race. Grant’s [Grant Enfinger] got this thing in the bag. I think it was three laps to go or something. Yeah, it altered the race. It obviously altered the championship. You know, I don’t know. It’s tough for me to be hard on him, because I sympathize with him, because the guy had it in the bag and he got it taken away from him. It’s the head-banging part of this sport. He did everything he was supposed to do correctly, and he ended up crashed, because someone chose not to race him fairly. So he gets defined on whether he won a championship or not, because of someone else’s decision, not his. So he’s pissed off in the moment.
“He’s like, ‘I’m not waiting until next year. Next year, my emotions aren’t going to be what they are right now.’ Did he mean to bring out a caution? I don’t know. But he definitely meant to run him up the race track. There’s no doubt about that.”
While Hamlin wouldn’t necessarily completely come out and pan Heim, he did emphasize that the finish to the Truck Series was a bad look, and something NASCAR wouldn’t be happy with.
“It was just not good. It was not a good look,” Hamlin added. “Honestly, it’s kind of old news now we can kind of forget about it. But man what a terrible precedent that set just for how to race for a championship and what not just generally speaking just how guys drove each other – I don’t know why they thought, it’s the last race, so I can just grind all my axes right here in this race.
“A lot of the wrecks weren’t even some championship contender guys that are going for it, they’re just a part-time guy wrecking a full-time guy or a full-time guy wrecking a part-time guy. I just don’t get it, they lost their brains. Maybe they watched the Xfinity race from the previous week and saw that it was okay and now we’re doing this on the regular, so. Yeah, just not a good look. You know I worry about the long-term stuff about if you do nothing about it.”
Regardless, you can’t change what happened in the Truck Series finale, but hopefully a lesson was learned by each driver involved.