Denny Hamlin slams current state of restarts, expects change from NASCAR
Veteran NASCAR driver Denny Hamlin is venting his frustrations about the current state of restarts. His criticism comes following the final overtime restart from Kansas Speedway on Sunday, calling it a “problem” for the Cup Series.
Hamlin finished second on Sunday, losing out to Tyler Reddick, who claimed his second victory of the NASCAR season over the weekend. Reddick capitalized on the final restart in Sunday’s race, but Hamlin suggests there’s an issue with how the sport handles that aspect.
“This is a problem in our series, for sure,” Hamlin said on his Actions Detrimental podcast. “I want to encourage the fans, look at the aerial video of the final restart. It looks like an ARCA restart. There’s cars spread out all over the front stretch. All of that is because somebody started laying back, somebody else started reacting and laying back, then the next car laid back. And if you look, there’s two rows organized, and those were the first two rows of the field. Everyone else was spread way out because everyone’s playing these stupid games at the end that’s bulls***.
“Essentially what happens — when we take off for a restart — it is a drag race. These cars don’t have a whole lot of power, so we’re wide open until we get to Turn 3.”
Hamlin believes that, after Sunday’s cluster in Kansas, NASCAR will address the issue before Saturday’s night race at Bristol Motor Speedway.
“NASCAR has said, ‘stop laying back.’ They’ve said it, but they haven’t done anything about it yet,” Hamlin said. “I would suspect, this week, that they do address it. … It’s just starting to become a trend where these guys are laying way back and they’re getting a run.”
Tyler Reddick breaks down final restart at Kansas
Because of his efforts on the restart, Reddick earned his second checkered flag of the Cup Series season. He explained how he was able to get back to Victory Lane.
“Just drove it down in there and it stuck, right?” Reddick said on SiriusXM. “We just did a good job of finding the hole and finding the open space. Hats off to my team, two tires has typically been the right call, but I think this place’s fall-off was trending in the direction where that was a little aggressive with the amount of laps that we ran.
“We did a good job by sticking with the right strategy and then we just got fortunate. People lined up in some odd places I think and it just opened us up to get to the bottom on that restart, get on the inside lane and jump a couple of rows. So it worked out good.”