Actions Detrimental with Denny Hamlin - Left With A Bonus Point

Episode Date: June 12, 2023

William Byron wins the first ever, Denny Hamlin Bracket Challenge. Did NASCAR make the right call throwing a caution for a loose tire on pit road (9:35). What happened to Denny on the restart after the first caution (13:28). NASCAR needs to fix the track limits for Sonoma and the paint that's on the track (15:54). What caused Denny to hit the wall and ruin his day (18:40). When Martin Truex Jr wins, the races tend to be boring. What is Denny's favorite trophy (28:28). 23XI adds a 3rd car for Indy (31:27). #DearDenny (35:07). Legacy MC having an awful year and more (45:20). Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

I had a bad evening. It kept getting worse. I kept losing you and chess, which was just terrible. It was a long flight. It was a long night. It was a total lack of awareness. It's like, wow, this is my race weekend summed up here in one chess match.

The following is a production of Dirtymo Media. Hey guys, welcome to another episode of Actions Detrimandle on Denny Hamlin drive the number 11 sport clips Toyota this weekend. And co-owner of the number 23 and 45 for Bubblewold. and Tyler Reddick. And I'm Jared Allen, number 560 in the Purple Vest Club, social media for Denny Hamlin and a few other drivers in the garage.

Yeah, Sonoma. Sonoma was, one, I don't know if I was super looking forward to it. After CODA and realizing how much time I was falling off from Tyleretic and how much lack of speed I had versus Tyler Redick. I don't know that I was super excited about it, but I do enjoy the process of getting better,

and certainly I got quite a bit better as far as speed's concerned. Not necessarily execution. But, man, these headsets are good. I don't know if you notice. I got some new headsets. I can hear you way better.

Yeah, Logitech. Their new ProX2 light speed headsets. that we got here for the studio. They're actually the same ones to run on my SIM for eye racing. So these are way better for sure. Getting a little practice in for this other road course we are coming up? I need to, apparently. The bad part about the Chicago road course is I heard the walls were even closer to the racetrack.

Yeah, it's going to be different than Sonoma, that's for sure. But speaking of Logitex since you brought them up, let's jump on this bracket because fellow Logitech driver, William Byron, won the bracket and I guess we'll be coming on this show as his reward. Yes. Yeah, a reward. I'm not really sure. So after the off weekend, so the following Monday, I guess after Nashville,

we'll work it out with his people. But yeah, William Byron, the winner of the mid-season bracket. I would like to say thank you, William Byron. You won my little golf league bracket for me. I had Willie B. going the whole way. Now they're saying, well, Deney, how can you not pick yourself to go the whole way? Because of weekends like this.

I mean, William's just been solid, and I told him before the race, take me the promised land, brother. So, yeah, it was closer than anticipated. Like I was talking about at driver intro as though, William was like, man, I thought, you know, he was telling me, going into this week.

I felt pretty good about it. You know, I feel like we'll qualify up front and we'll have Brad by a certain amount of speed. And he's like, next thing you know, we qualify 25th, 26. And he's right beside me. I'm like, oh. He says, yeah, I'm a little nervous myself. So it was cool to see how, you know, that it was close, you know, in a race where, you know,

the TV probably lacked at times stuff to talk about. I mean, these guys were running right next to each other. for most of the day and I looked when I was in the infield care center getting my uh doing my concussion tests and all that stuff I look over there at the TV and these guys are running one second apart in like 15th and 16th or something so um great job for Brad making it to the finals uh but just comes up a couple spots short um I posted on Twitter that anyone that could guess the winner of the bracket and by how many spots. I would send you some stuff.

I was very vague there, so I got to figure out, my mom has got my stuff. She's the one who kind of hoards a bunch of stuff down in my basement and that I give away for like fan stuff or whatever. We'll figure out what we're going to send you guys. There's 15 people that got Byron by two spots right. A lot of them, look at the names, These are people that I see on Twitter often.

So, well, I guess they follow me. Yeah. They're in your mentions. Yeah, no doubt. Yeah, a couple, there's a couple DFS guys in here that play fantasy for sure. Nicole Huddy. I see her in my mentions quite a bit. She's a good fan of mine.

So, yeah, it's great. And the official, there was an official winner of the 46,000, thousand brackets. We had one winner. Jared Rushner. Rusher. Jared Rusher was the official winner. Think about this. We talked about this before we went live on air here. Tell me, Jared, what was the most surprising thing about his bracket? Well, here, you read off the amount of the many correct in each round. Okay. In the first round, he got 13 of 16 correct. The second round. The second round, seven of eight like you got to think there were if you remember there were a ton of upsets in the first round because of wrecks and attrition yep then in the final eight he went three of four and then he in the he had the final four correct and he went two of two and then in the final round

he went one of one he had the winner William Byron so that's where I was surprised right because if he has the final four correct, that means that he was all in on the Bowman Berry combination beating Ty Gibbs, which I think was... That was 50-50. It's 15 seed versus an 18 seed. But then he has

Bowman Berry beating Bell, who was running very well at the time. I think he was leading the points. Yep. And then beating either you or Larson at Charlotte, which again, I think is to pick that combination over both of those guys when Josh Barry doesn't, didn't have much experience.

It's the next-gen car. Yeah. Like, that's just a wild pick. Hey, you know how you see like on NBA finals and whatnot? They have a dog that like bounces a ball into a basket and makes its picks. Like, yeah, yep, yep. I wonder if that's how this went down or he just was like, well, Kyle and Denny, they're either going to finish really good or they're going to finish really bad.

I mean, job well done. You beat a lot of other people. Thanks for everyone, everyone who participated it definitely got some good social media steam and hopefully you know NASCAR will latch on to this next year and and do something with it i mean jared even got tagged in an NBC post about the bracket challenge yesterday i did really NBC's NASCAR twitter account tagged Jared along with you and dirty moe an inactive Twitter account Jared Dallin yeah you're i mean it's every week now i'm hearing people shouting your name every week it was a little quiet on the west coast i don't think uh the pot has reached

out there just yet. Yeah, it's true. True. I thought speaking of this bracket, I thought it was cool that the drivers took a, like they were thinking about it. They embraced it. I think Brad was the one who initiated the conversation on Twitter last week, right? And then I passed by William at the Better Half Dash running last week. And he was like, hey, coming on the podcast. Oh, he was confident then. He was going to win it. They were both thinking about it. Yeah. I mean, when I saw that Brad was like, one second behind William with, you know, five or six to go. I'm like, he's got to be, he sees him. You know he's, you know, Brad is pushing, you know, to get there. Interesting enough that, you know, I was pushing when I was behind William Byron, which is why I ran into the inside wall,

uh, down the front straight away. Um, I talked about it before the, the weekend even started that like getting better at road courses in general was going to be a process for me i knew that it wasn't going to happen overnight um i was very very happy with our performance this weekend um obviously we were you know our our lifetimes were good in practice we weren't like top of the charts or anything but we could tell that we had speed when i could hit it right and then qualifying we had three laps all in the 77 bracket which is you know only one that did that and then we you know hey we led 30 some laps and won a stage. So we didn't leave there with nothing. We did get one bonus point, which is like having one more spot up in the standings at the end of the regular season.

But this is what kind of, you know, I didn't expect it to go down like this, but this is kind of the process it takes, right? Is that, you know, nailing one lap and nailing 110 is two totally different things. And I just, I mean, it's just usually I like kind of run off track or I have a bad restart or something that kind of, you know, makes me lose track position most of the time on road courses, but I felt like I really put together a solid day all around. Now, again, we lost track position when that caution came out, which, you know, I don't know how I feel about that. I mean, listen, I know that NASCAR probably was dying for a caution during that time. You know, me and Trux had pulled away from the field, I think, 12, 13 seconds.

It was a ways. I didn't put it this way. When we were leaving turn 11, I saw the other third place start to come off a turn 10. So it was a ways for sure. And you're saying you don't know how you feel about a caution being thrown. Well, it's right in the middle of a, it's, well, yes, because for one, that pit road is different than other pit roads.

There's no direct entryway for a car to, end up on pit lane from the racetrack. So if you see a bunch of racetracks where you can spin off a turn four and then end up on pit lane, here it's completely blocked off. So no cars will be coming on pit lane. It's right in the middle of pit lane.

It's right in the middle of a pit sequence which jumbles up the whole field. I mean, it certainly didn't do us any favors. But you've got to think that like, NASCAR as officials at the entrance of pit lane, they could perhaps say nobody's coming somebody run out there and take five seconds

to go get that tire this is my Cota idea but like even on you know say emsa or whatever you have local yellows right like just create hey on

heads up guys there's a tire on pit lane if cars are coming in I get it but like pit road was pretty yes and no like when you come to strategy at Sonoma

you don't see a host a bunch of cars coming at one time it's a few cars every now and then so i get it i mean i get it i you probably to be consistent got to throw a caution there which they did i just hated it because it took away our our track position and obviously mired us back in 10th for the rest of the day yeah well isn't that kind of a battle you you'd have anyway because there were no stage breaks so i guess if you could you could plan it so you're always restarting up front at the beginning of next stage. But typically the leaders will lose their track position like Truex and have to drive back to the field. Well, the ones that flipped in front of us when that caution came right before the end of the stage were ones that said, okay, we're not

running in the top 10 anyway. Right. Let's go ahead and pit here. In case a caution falls, whoever has not pit now has to restart behind us and we only have a couple laps on our tires. So really, if you look at the guys that finished up front, with the exception of, you know, Truex, McDowell, Chase was kind of, he was up front for most of the day, if I can remember right. They were guys that flipped. They were running mid-pack, pitted, caught the caution. I mean, Cowbush comes to mine for sure. But yeah, it's just, it's so hard to pass.

I just cannot believe how hard it is to pass. When you get near someone in these cars, your car loses so much grip. I mean, the pace I was setting out front, I was cruising, and me and Truex were gone. Like, I was gone from Truex. He gained a little bit on that green flag cycle. He was a little better on the short run there. But then we, in the long run, I think it was about 10 to go or so in the state. Now, maybe a little less.

I'd kind of, I didn't drive back. I was right two car lengths from him. I came back to him a little bit, and I'm like, man, we've got the two best cars. But man, the difference is that the caution comes. He had a good stop. He came out first on pit lane. I came out fourth that put him with a choose two rows in front of me. I got jammed up by cars with tires in front of me.

His lane went. Next thing you know, he's six spots in front of me. And I'm like, we run one lap on the road. I was just on his ass 13 seconds ahead of third, and this is just the way it ended up, and now I'm mired back here. You just couldn't pass. Like, you could pass,

but you had to be so significantly better than the car in front of you to do it. That's what was just so surprising about it. What I'm curious, though, is with you saying, with you talking about losing track position, is that this Sonoma race didn't have stage breaks, right? So you didn't have the regimented caution

at 25, 50, whatever the laps were. You were leading the race at the end of stage one. I assume had we had stage breaks, you probably would have stayed out to collect that playoff point, or would you have pitted to stay up front to start stage two? Well, that's a good point. Since we were leading the race, we would have probably pitted and gave up the stage points.

And then there would have been guys that wanted to get stage point so that would have flipped them to the back, and then we would have flipped back towards the front. I would have rather had a shot to win than stage points for sure. Got it. But the way that we're doing with no stage breaks now, it actually lets the race play out more naturally. And so you don't have this flip-flopping.

But the race has a potential to get boring. I mean, it does. I mean, you know, I know that Harvick was one that really kind of advocated for this no stage break. and I totally get the reason for it, right? It allows you to determine your own strategy, which that's why those guys flipped that caution on us, right? Is they played a different strategy than we did, and it paid off. I totally get that for sure.

But you have a chance with no stage breaks of this thing just going green, green, green. I mean, had the caution not come for that tire, we could have been caution. Well, and then you had my wreck. So, I mean, there was not much else to it. Do you think caution should be thrown for drivers knocking the tire barriers out of the way

in turn 11? Well, they just need to make a more permanent thing there. I mean, we're not even racing on the surface anymore. I saw, you know, Brett Griffin, those guys talking about it on Twitter. But I agree with them. you know, the problem is is where we're all searching

for the paint on the racetrack. So we keep, well, we, someone keeps knocking the tires for the right, for the right, and now we've got our whole car on the paint. And that's just, paint, while it is good for the grip of your car, it adds grip to all cars that do it.

So such as turn four, for instance. If you look, there's a big door dash label off of turn four. Well, as soon as we got to it, it was like instant traction. So your car sliding through the corners and then bam, our car gains a ton of grip. Well, that's a passing zone, or it was one.

So usually guys would get terrible runs off of turn four. And if you were close to someone that got sideways, you could then charge and make a move on them into turn seven. But with this big old grip strip of paint that they put down on the racetrack, it just levels all of our cars out. Like excess grip for next-gen cars is not a good thing. It makes all of our cars run the same speed.

It takes away a passing zone. We've got to be a little bit more aware of where we're putting paint on some of these racetracks. Like, I mean, they could have shaded it a little bit more off track and not messed up, you know, the advertising that they had. But they painted all the way down the end of the track surface, basically. So you're saying that one of the passing zones at Sonoma, this was one of them. and it was kind of affected by the way the track is painted. Yes, absolutely. It was.

And then like we're talking about turn 11, we keep moving the track limits, right? Like, as you see, those tires just keep getting knocked further in, further in. And that allows us to put, you know, it used to be those tires would be on the rumble strips. It's not even rumble strips, by the way. Like, it's just built up paint. And so we're not even running on the actual surface anymore.

If you put us back on the surface of turn 11, cars would not handle as good. But right now, we all go in there and we shoot for that paint. And our car just literally goes from sliding to grip. And then we take off all the same speed because our cars all have the same amount of grip. So you've got to put us back on the racing surface where it's slicker, where car handling will matter. I think that passing was reduced a little bit by how the track limits in turn 11. and then the paint in turn four. What were you trying to do when you were behind William there before you hit the wall?

Because you were cheating to the left on the inside. So he actually got a bad, he missed the paint in turns 11 and I hit it very well. And I'm like getting a big run on him. And I'm thinking, oh my gosh, I've been riding on his ass for 15 laps. Like I got to get around him because, you know, I got passed by Larson because, you know, I got passed by Larson because I just got held up by Byron. That's another thing like I've got to get better at is these road course passing, right? It is optimizing and being an efficient passer on these types of rates.

It's one thing to go out there and run by yourself and run a fast lap time. A lot of people can do that. But just doing it in a race condition is what the challenge is. So I'm pushing to get around Byron. I get a run on him and I start to shade left because what I'm about to do, because I do, I do have run is that as soon as we get past that little bend in the wall, I'm shooting to the left to then put him on the outside of up the hill. And so I just misjudged it. Like it was just, it was such a small hit. I thought I had something break when I, when I hit the wall because it just shot me

dead right and hit the fence. But like, my God, that was just terrible on my part, awful driving. I hate it for my team because they, you know, we had, we were about to leave with a very good weekend. You know, and you say, well, we were battling for ninth there or something like that. We had like six place right there in front of us. We, I felt like we could easily got to six or seventh somewhere in there. But just, just made a mistake. And I hate it because, you know, this is, you know, between Charlotte finishing last and here finishing last. Like we're, we're, every time we get close to like, hey, we could leave.

here with the points later very close to it it's like we finished last it's just so frustrating but at least we we left there with one more bonus point yeah is that a is that a consolation prize like as a driver if you knew if you had a win in your pocket and you were locked into the playoffs going to a racetrack if you knew that you could leave with a playoff point or leave with you know 10 points well like i rather have the playoff point like i said that one playoff point is the same as moving up one spot in the regular season. So the difference between if you finish fifth or fourth in the points, you get one more bonus points.

So it's like automatically moving up one spot in the regular season. So it does matter. It's the only solace I left there with. I mean, it was just kind of me and you on the plane, right? And we were like, well, that was a waste of a trip. I'm like, well,

and then I said, well, we left with a bonus point, you know, which is good. You know, so we didn't leave with nothing, but I certainly, I had a bad evening. It kept getting worse. I kept losing you and chess, which was just terrible. It was a long flight. It was a long flight.

It was a long flight. The gears weren't spinning as fast in your head. I know, right? Like, I was just like, what am I think? Like, a couple times I had you dead rights on the chess board and just, just total, it was a total lack of awareness. It's like, wow, this is my race weekend. up here in one chess match but oh i hate it like gosh man i'm so close to being where i want to be

as a driver and then i make a mistake like this weekend it's just totally unacceptable i just got to get so much better well being where you want to be the we'll get to true x and his win here in a second but the top seven in points are separated by a total of 33 points being where you want to be your eighth and another 20 behind that. The reason it is because no one's dominating. People are doing things that I'm doing. Like they're having a good week and then they go finish 25th and then a good week and they go finish 27th. Like there's just been no consistency at the top of like consistent drivers putting five, six weeks together. But that's good, right? No, it's great for competition. I still feel like a minute. I still feel like, you know, with like 70

positions worth of finishing over two weeks. I still feel like I'm in contention to get a very good regular season playoff standing, which is bonus points. So I love it that it's inconsistent. Yeah. Truex.

Dominated. Consistent. And one thing about Truex, it feels like most of his wins come in this kind of fashion. Like he's good and he's just really good. Yeah. I saw I saw a Twitter post and someone said that Martin Trucks wins aren't usually exciting.

Right, that's what I mean. When he's good, he's just better than everybody else. Yeah, yeah, and he was. He was. He ran us down after stage one. You know, he gained a little bit us on the pit sequence, but he just kind of ran us down there. Now, he didn't leave us once he passed us,

and we kind of had a miscommunication on our, and turn 11 there on whether he was inside or not. But we gave up the lead nonetheless and then just kind of sat there behind him for a while. But he was good. I mean, he really was good. This is one of Martin's best racetracks. And anytime he shows up somewhere and he's good in practice, you can bank he's going to be good in the race. He's just that team and him are exceptional at this racetrack.

And, you know, he's even if his car's not perfect, he'll find a way to be in continuing. because he's so good there. What did the Toyotas find from last year to this year? Because all the Toyotas were good, at least in qualifying. Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, we talked about a lot, but really our car was at such a deficit because our bodies were essentially built around a bigger spoiler. And when NASCAR cut the spoiler down before the first season and next gen,

it really changed the aerodynamic properties or characteristics of what we designed our car around. So we just had a body that was not very good. And while it paid some dividends on the bigger tracks, it was awful on the smaller tracks. And so we just got that, you know, everyone resubmitted a new front-in for this year. All the manufacturers did. And we just felt like we submitted something

that was a little bit better overall for us. But it had to be in a box. So just so, you know, NASCAR, you can't just design whatever you want and have a huge advantage over the field. NASCAR says, okay, we're learning that. Yeah. You have a box that has to fit in with drag,

which is essentially how fast it goes down the straightaway, and then downforce is basically how fast it goes in the corner. So NASCAR has a little box and says, okay, Ford, Chevy, and Toyota, you can't be any higher than this on drag, or you can't be lower than this on drag. You can't be higher than this in downforce, and all three manufacturers are within that little square.

Where was Truex going into this race? Obviously, he's good at Sonoma because his fourth win there. But you had said that Tyler was the guy set in our benchmark for Toyota. Where was Martin in that mix? Yeah, I mean, I thought Tyler would have a better week for sure. I mean, I'm sitting here thinking on the first lap, I'm like, oh, God, I just hope I can get out in front of him and at least set my own pace. but I just I never saw them all day I was looking on the pylon kind of as you're going up to

off the turn 11 there and into turn one the pylon's right in front of you so I'm kind of checking to see well who's running second third fourth and just you know I don't know I haven't dissected his day I haven't you know got the team meeting here shortly but yeah he wasn't wasn't that strong he wasn't that strong in practice either. It's not like Cota where if you look at the times, it was like, man, he's the guy two beat, no question. And then he qualified on the front row, you're like, he's going to be tough. But yeah, I'm not really sure what it was or where's day got derailed. Again, when I was in the care center, I saw they put Tyler Rex car on the TV and it says,

track limits. He has a track limit penalty. And I'm like, where in the hell could he have track limit? I mean, did it go through the dirt and cut a corner or what? I didn't realize he cut a whole lap off. He's just like, no, I didn't do that corner well. Let me do that again.

And he went back into the pits when he had a flat tire. But yeah, certainly not the day they were hoped before for sure. But, you know, you ask where is true? Truex. Truex has always been one of the best road course racers that we've got at JGR. Him and Kyle have held the flagship for a while. Then you saw a transition where Bell started to really be good. I've never been the flagship road course racer at our team.

I've always just kind of been the second best or third best at the time. But yeah, I think that he's exceptional at road courses. This one in particular. You know, the high wear road courses is the one where Martin's skill set really shines through. Yeah, well, he's got four wine bottles at Sonoma now. That's awesome. I mean, do you drink those? That come from the track?

Yeah. How do I know, Jared? I've never won there. Would you drink? I was looking at the pictures of his. Yeah, I would drink, you know, they, I guess they fill up a huge wine glass and like you just take a huge chug of it. Right. But then as part of the trophy, or at least the old trophy, you had a wine bottle.

No, you don't drink that. Yeah, that's what I'm wondering. No? Just drink it and put it back? An empty bottle? Yeah. No. Do you drink it like when your cure is over or something, open it up then?

Like you got to drink it at some point, right? No, it's part of the trophy. There's no liquid in it? No, there has to be. No, there is. Yeah. I won the Gillette Proglide 500 at Pocono in 2016, and I got a razor that's two foot tall by about a foot wide

the blades are massive do I shave with that it would make it easy one swipe and you're done it would it would decapitate me it is massive Travis it's freaking huge oh that's like hey uh you got the Chevy rock and roll

400 at Richmond I got a guitar do you play it no it's a trophy you drink the coax out of the cook machine Yeah, it's different though. Hey, I want to give a shout out to Gateway on their badass trophy they had last week, which is why I was... Yeah. It is so underrated the mix of just beautiful silver and wood trophies. God, I love them.

Oh, I saw that pre-race, and I'm like, I just started salivating. I'm like, God, I want that trophy so bad. I want my 50th to come on with a badass trophy. What is the best trophy in NASCAR, in your opinion? Oh, gosh. I don't know. I don't know. I have to think about that for sure.

One of the best, and this actually doesn't fall under this. And don't say like Daytona or something like that. No, no. I was going to say California is one that I really wanted. Never going to get it. But at Fontana, I like the surfboard. Yeah, and that. That one was cool.

I don't know, there's quite a few of them that are awesome, but more silver, more gold, more wood combinations. It just never gets old. Like if you see some of the biggest trophies in NASCAR, or really all of motorsports, like all the significant trophies like Borg Warner for Indy 500, right? It's just a big-ass silver. That's kind of what the Indy one, or not Indy, the Gateway one reminded me of in a sense.

Yeah, it was cool. It's at Kyle Busch's house if we want to go check it out. While we're on the topic of road course racing, some news last week that Kamui Kobayashi will make his NASCAR debut for 2311 racing in the number 67 car at the Indy Road Course in August. Yeah, this is a big one. Japanese-born driver, Kamui. he is extremely good he was just at la ma'a he's been a big part of toyota's uh drivers for many many years now and he is i mean he is a extremely good road course racer so we're excited to see and especially like you know we're going to get to at least have a test with him um you know we don't you know we haven't got

to do that in the special like you know Travis pastrana when we were out here in in the middle of Mooresville Business Park trying to do launches so he didn't install the car on the first lap driving the car during a qualifying session for the Daytona 500. We actually get to, you know, there's a special waiver you get when you have a driver coming in. You get to do a test. So we'll take him and do some testing with them one time and we're certainly excited for it. Toyota is excited for it. This is a big deal for both parties, 2311. to get to run their third entry again and for Camui and Toyota. So we're really happy and obviously going to be excited to see how he does in that car.

Yeah, what is the goal of something like this? Like what are all parties trying to get out of it? Well, I think that all parties, it just kind of depends on who you are for sure, right? You want to bring awareness to your manufacturer. You know, again, he's part of their driving program and other. series. So coming over here, you know, it's just a Japanese-born driver. Like, I really truly believe he has a chance to be successful doing this. So, you know, for 2311, it's continued to build out a third team and continue to get, you know, build some player development there on that side. So that's,

that's what it is for us, certainly. And it's a big partnership between us and Toyota. Yeah, I ask that because if you look back to when Travis drove for you at Daytona, the feel of that versus this seems a little different to me, right? This one had a big announcement overseas in Europe, whereas Travis, that felt like a personal goal that Travis just wanted to drive in the Daytona 500, and it seemed like it was just put together a little differently. Yes. Yes and no. They were put together actually pretty similarly, but Travis had some previous NASCAR experience. and so, you know, Camui doesn't. So I think that, I think he's going to run, you know,

considering like how well Kimi did in the Project 91 car at Watkins Glen, like it gives me a little bit of, you know, at least in practice qualifying, he was pretty fast. Like, it gives me some optimism that, like, he might actually be pretty, you know, our cars are pretty good. So, like, he might be someone that could contend, you know. I mean, content for the win. No, probably not, but I would say that he could definitely be a top 10 guy.

Is there a reason for the Indy Road Course versus something like Watkins Gun? Like has Kamui seen Turn 1 in? I'm not really sure. Yeah, I'm not sure. I don't know the answer to that, to be honest with you. We're already going the wrong direction at Indy to begin with. So hopefully this is the last time we're running that road course. Bring back the prestige of our majors, please. that we want to ask

Dear Denny We need answers And we need him fast We tried to ask Junior but his answers were lame And with DBC It was more of the same Now we're caught on you

Because you're our only hope This ain't the race track So maybe you won't choke On to some dear Denny What would you Or would you want NASCAR to hold a race That has a time limit

Hmm time limit um i would say no we're not emsa let's stop i stop copying other sports i mean uh i mean even f1 i mean i guess they have a time limit right they have a time limit but they but that's when like it's red flagged and right not racing right it's 67 laps or two and a half hours whatever comes first, right? But they usually leave themselves some buffer time on that. I would say no. They need to, in my opinion, just kind of make the races, the races are taking longer. These cars are slower than the old cars. So running the same amount of laps as we did when we had 900 horsepower, you know, the cars are just slower. So it takes longer. These races

are lasting longer, which that's all good. But we have no time for post-race interviews anymore. Like you don't even hear it's victory lane and see ya. I think it's more important for us to have post-race than it is probably. I mean, pre-race is important, but post-race, I think, is very important. And it's definitely something we've lost over the last few years. I'd like to see the data on that. How many fans stick around, how many TV viewers stick around for a well-put-together post-race show? For any sport, for that matter.

Well, I think what happens is the TV's turned on. and he just don't turn it off. Like when I come home, the channel is still on Fox. We've given ratings to the next three shows in a row or four shows in a row. Think about when Noah and Ross had their beef. There wasn't this extended conversation about it. So when you have a storyline, you lose it because you go to the next thing. So if you would have an extended, there's all that coverage.

Look at Travis coming in with some good. Making that third mic useful. I know. I agree with you. Good job. That's right. I mean, exactly. And like we're, then we could talk about, well, you know, what does this mean for next week?

Yeah. You know? And so I just think that sometimes we're really relying on the fan to tune into shows like this or whatever to get the download on what's going on. Now, we want you to continue to do that, by the way. But I just think that, yeah, you do lose that when you don't talk about it, you know, post-event. I want to say thank you to Fox for for their portion of the season. definitely thought that we had some good stuff this year and some great analysts. I loved hearing Murray in the booth.

I think he is such an undervalued, you know, analyst within our sport. I liked actually the combination of kind of him and Boyer and how they go back and forth. And I think, you know, generally speaking, Boyer's gotten better this year. I think Kevin Harvick will bring a huge, huge valuable voice to our sport of someone that's been in the car. In the last, you know, he just got out of the race car. Now he's going to the booth next year. So, you know, and my joy is just a ton of knowledge in that guy's brain that he brings each and every week. So thank you to our partners in Fox for their portion.

And don't forget, they're still going to be doing the trucks. and they're going to have race help each weeknight as well, so make sure you continue to tune in. But so long caricatures. So long caricatures. Yep. Goodbye.

Hopefully I'll never see you again, but evidently I dug into it, you know, and they're like, oh, this comes from way up in Fox. Like somebody way up likes them. Yeah, they could give two sh**ts about Denny Hamlin's opinion. They don't give them for sure.

After retiring, would you be interested in driving in Lamonts now that NASCAR isn't invested in that? Never wants to come up on my bucket list of things that I care to do. I don't know. I mean, it's not what I was born aspiring to do. I understand that it's a huge race. I get it. I've never been super into Lamont just simply because I just grew up in Virginia on you know, in go-karts on a dirt oval and all I cared about was NASCAR racing.

So I know it's not on my list. I would love to attend. I think it would be cool to attend. I like those events because it's an event. I'm not going there to watch cars go around a racetrack for 24 hours. I'm going there to see, well, how does a team, how are they branding their team apparel? How are they doing their cars? you know, how is the team look and how does, like, just, I'm interested in all those kind of things.

Like, what kind of pre-race parties are there, like for the event? You know, anything that we can learn as a race team. Hospitality, how are they treating their sponsors versus what we do? I definitely like to go there for that reason, but as far as participating, no, probably not. Have you spoken to anyone that was a part of this garage 56 project? It seemed like it was a success overall. Yeah, I think it was. I mean, it certainly was a lot of effort put into it for sure from from NASCAR and Hendrick

Motorsports and Chevrolet. So it was. Definitely, if you look at kind of, you know, how much publicity got, it sounds like the people at LaMalle were really excited to see that car. And so, you know, it's such a, it's such a far reach of a next gen. Like it's a next-gen car, but there's not a ton. I don't know. I mean, maybe 50% of the parts are true next-gen. Maybe it's less.

Maybe it's more. But generally speaking, hey, this is a stock car built from a next-gen platform racing in the Lamont. I guess it was only out of the race for, what, an hour? So it ran like 23 hours or something like that, 22 hours. So that was definitely a success. Certainly a lot of resources were poured into this from NASA. I'm sure it cost a ton of money, but it, you know, from the articles I read, it's more about, you know,

NASCAR is trying to get some global interest for our sport. And so, yeah, I think that anything we can do to grow our sports a better thing. And hats off to, for the, for NASCAR, Jim France, and Hendrick for putting that all together and putting all, all the effort. and the time they did to make that a success. 16 races in, halfway point in the season. What are your takeaways so far? Just from you personally and just from the series as a whole. My takeaways is there's, you know,

we talk about many times in previous seasons. We've already got like, who's the dominator? Who's going to dominate this week? Like, there's just not, we talked about it. Like, there's just no one taking this season and grabbing it and saying I'm the best week in and week out. I mean, there's a few that are, you know,

you talk about William Byron, Kyle Larson, who's consistently up front week in week out. Now this week they weren't, you know, Larson didn't live up to kind of the hype of what we expected in the cup race, certainly in Xfinity he dominated until he didn't. Lost track position, by the way, and that was it. He had almost a second on the field,

but he got put back from, leading to behind Eric Amarola in a Seag racing car. And Eric, by the way, did a fabulous job. I have to give props to Eric because he did not make any mistakes when Kyle Larson was behind him. I watched him. His technique was good, like his lines were good, and he just didn't make any mistakes.

And he forced Larson to make a mistake to try to pass him. So Eric, shout out to him for that. That was awesome to see. But it shows how much your car is. slows down just when one other car is behind it. And Larson was pushing because he knew if he sat behind Eric, two more laps, it was going to be, he just wasn't going to get there. He was going to heat up his stuff so bad. He was going to lose time. So, you know, he didn't win there. He ran kind of mediocre in his standards on the road course. Hinder cars in general weren't, I mean,

they were pretty good. The nine was pretty good. Five pass me and late in the run. 24 was not, but he improved for race day. But yeah, it was, I just haven't seen anyone be dominant on all racetracks, which is a good thing. It means that each week there's ebbs and flows and you just don't know who's going to win on any given week. Yeah, it's an interesting takeaway compared to last year, right? You had a handful of different winners last year. This year, you've kind of got that same feel where anyone could win, but there's still

a group of cars. Well, I say this. Anyone can win of about 12 guys. There's 12 guys that you're like, and then there's just everyone else. But that everyone else seems closer. Or at least these guys have a good five weeks. These guys don't, and the points are closer.

Yeah. So when I say there's 12 and then there's everyone else, everyone else, so that let's just call it the next eight drivers after the 12, they're closer now to the best 12. than they've ever been. Right. But still week in, week out.

The winner will come from one of these 12 and unless the race flips up on its head because of strategy or a bunch of wrecks. One thing we didn't talk about at the beginning of the show,

some housekeeping from last week, Eric Jones and Legacy Racing, the next team to get hit with a major penalty. Well, they've been hit, they've been kicked in the balls. They've done everything possible for that team this year.

They are, when you got Noah Grex and saying, I'm counting down the days of the offseason and we're not even halfway home, yikes. I mean, you know, I think that, you know, that team obviously making an announcement going to Toyota next year. Who knows what information they're getting and whether that information is even reliable anymore from whoever they have an alliance with. But it's been a tough year for them, no question about it. And then on top of that, now you got Noah that got out due to an injury. But thoughts are with Noah. Hopefully, he's got a couple week break now, and we'll see him back in Nashville. But I know it's been super frustrating.

Noah and Eric are certainly better than what their performance and what they're showing right now. It's not on them. I don't think anyone at the team would say that we've got a driver problem. That team has probably got the most upside when it comes to driver talent. for results it's getting right now, and I know it's frustrating for them, but obviously there's a lie at the end of the tunnel for that team, and I think that they will get better.

How do you operate as a team now, knowing that you're going to have a new manufacturer next year, your only chance of making the playoffs is by winning a race. And you haven't even sniff that. Right. So do you push the limits more and take the hits as they come? Like, what is the, how would you go about that? I don't know.

I mean, what's your, what's your rallying cry? What, what, within the shop, like, what's your rallying cry of, we're getting better? We're, we're going to be there by the end of the year. I don't know. You don't have any real results to back any of it up, right? Like, it's just almost like, guys, let's just try to get things solid so that we were ready for a change next year, right? It's a tough situation to be in because, you know, if you do have an alliance with someone, certainly all these manufacturers and teams are so protective over what information they do have

that if they know you're going away next year, I mean, it's likely they're not getting any information anymore. It's like rebuilding and tanking in another sport, except you don't get a draft pick at the end of the year. Exactly. And it's not intentional. You know, they're not trying to be bad. Right. You know, so it's just, but I like that you said that because it is a rebuild when you think about it. Yeah.

You know, they fought for so long, that team legacy, let's not forget, this was petty GMS, and it was petty before that. They've always just been mediocre at best, right? They would get a few wins here and there, not much. they had the win at the Southern 500 last year with Eric Jones, and it was like they were hitting their, that was like their peak. And then it just went kind of downhill from there.

But they are. They are in a rebuilding year for sure. And I think the rebuild will take years for that team to be where they want to be for sure, because it just takes time. I can tell you, as a guy building a team from the ground up, you know, we're two and a half years into 2311. I mean, we're still not where we want to be,

but we're we can see, we're seeing results coming from hires we've made, decisions we've made with competition and management, like those are starting to show fruit and results. Yeah, so if you're not, if your team, 25th wasn't winning, what are you, like, what are you trying to take away from each day? If you're not performing on the racetrack,

what can you take away, just the small things in the shop, doing things right? Yeah, on such a weekend like this, our 23 11 is probably looking around and saying, okay, well, the 11 had the same car as us. Like, why was he faster than us? And, you know, how much of that was track position? How much of that was just whatever? But then in the end, the 19 car was the best car. So as the 11, the 23, the 20, the 54, all of us are looking and saying, okay, what did the 19 do better than us? Why is Martin Truex so good at this racetrack? What do we need to learn from him versus what do we need out of our race car to be better?

And lastly, NASCAR put Stuart Haas as a legal part on show this week. So we're getting a little bit more of that transparency as the year goes on. Amen. That's a great thing. We push forth here many, many weeks ago on this show that would love to see the transparency and NASCAR not only being transparent, but like, explaining it. Like I love what they did explaining saying, you know, because if they just set the part out, it's still, you know, no offense to you, Jared, but you don't know what the fuck you're looking at, right?

Most likely. Right, you wouldn't know, right? But he's like, hey, look at this template. It fits this one. Look at this. It does not fit this one. And we can see the textures different. So they made it themselves.

It's not one of our pieces. So I love what they did there. It removes all doubt. Now, there's still doubt on, like, did they, were they trying to do that for performance? Now, I'll say this, that the hole being smaller like that, yeah, yeah, that's probably a performance gain. You know, if you're going to build a counterfeit part, why would you build one with a smaller hole? You know, unless you were deliberately going for performance. But I could definitely see while that is such a easy part for you to manufacture,

as with all those machines you have to where if it went on a pit car or a show car, you could just put it on there and it'd be easier. But why wouldn't you spec it to be the same size? Listening to Jordan Bianchi and Jeff Gluck on the tear down last night, I thought it was interesting that they had mentioned. NASCAR put some measures into place so they knew what their parts were versus what other parts were. Like they, oh, like our part has this little thing and yours doesn't.

Like they're one step ahead of the competition. Yeah, and I just continue to applaud NASCAR on making these decisions, because as a race team owner, I mean, the minute that they let something like this go, I mean, it just screws our whole model that's already not good. Like, it makes it even worse. And so they told us these were going to be the penalties. If you do this, we know it's steep, but you got to stop doing it. And we talked about it in the media center, like,

I got asked, well, does publicly shaming the teams like NASCAR is doing, will that deterred? I'm like, hopefully, right? Like, you should be embarrassed if you, you know, do something like that. So hopefully, you know, certainly there's conversations within Stuart Haas right now saying, okay, like that, that's not a good look for us. Is that the way teams in the garage look at each other? Like if Stuart Haas, you know, manufactures apart, like is 23, 11, looking at them like uh you know you all should be embarrassed no i wouldn't say that it's it's it's

general public that that is probably saying you know what in the world are they doing you know why they do this um obviously it could be for for performance reasons but it's more of a you know all the teams know that you know we're fighting to try to find a hundredth of a second here a hundredth of a second there because all the cars are so close in speed, which is why it's so hard to pass, which is why we're not making contact with each other at road courses anymore because we can't get near to each other. Like the arrow is, it just makes it that tough to get near someone to make contact. Um, you know, and so I just think that, uh, this is what we got. Yeah, I just think, I feel like the penalty, penalties are getting to the point where there

enough of a turn. It is. In my opinion. Me too. If you're a team that's fighting for the bubble spot and trying to point your way in, a single poundy like this just takes you out completely. It does. Now, again, it certainly could win for like the 14 team or whatever. They could just get right back in the top 16 with the win. But, I mean, the way they've been running it, that seems like a tall task.

Yeah. You have any plans for the off week? Not yet. You don't like vacation. I don't. I'm not a vacation guy. It's just hard for me to tune out and turn off the phone. and not have to answer emails and stuff.

I feel like I'm missing out on decisions that need to be made, and just the FOMO sets in. But I am going to try to take four days somewhere. I don't know where yet when I get done with this. I'm going to take the rest of the afternoon and try to plan something. Where do Taylor and Molly like going? Obviously, they got something right now. They're fishes.

They love swimming, for sure. So I don't know. know i got to figure it out uh there's a few places i like uh but definitely want to you know i don't know if i want to try something new well we'll be off next week um no show but sorry guys i need a break the following week uh we'll have william byron yes uh no is it the following week or the following week i thought the following week our next show would include william our people are going to get with your people and william will be some people were taking offense to the, me saying William

will be the first official guest. My mom, right, is the first official guest. First, third, well, other than Travis over there. So, William, we got a great spot for you right here in the middle. I think that's where I would do. I can't wait to grill you.

And know what I, you know what I loved about it? Is that, um, I told you guys, I says, it doesn't matter who wins either Brad or or William. There has to be a segment called, it's not too late to say I'm sorry. So we're going to have some deep conversation

about some run-ins that we've had with each other or in the past. I mean, this is a big, big moment because this sets the tune for perhaps the second half of the season on this show, right? If William comes on here and it's a huge success and he enjoys it, then maybe other drivers will come on. I mean, maybe, just maybe I could get some Hendrick Motorsports fans

to tune in. What do you think? I think so. It's possible. possible? Okay. All right. Well, we're looking forward to it. Next time we are, yeah, so yeah, it's the next time that we are on. We're going to have Willie B here. Yeah. What I was going to say is just send your questions in on Twitter. If you got anything. Yeah, there you go. I want to know about William and Denny. Yep. Send them in. Where are they send them in to? Travis, where they send them into? Do dear Denny. Use that hashtag Dear Denny or Dear Denny and William.

all right well dear denny me and william next week or in two weeks we will see y'all then after a race in nashville that hopefully we get a dub and william finishes behind us so tune in then everyone enjoy the off week we're going to miss y'all next monday we'll see you in two weeks before you close your app like share subscribe all the social things all that stuff y'all see ya check out dirty moe media on twitter facebook tick tock and instagram Thank you.