Actions Detrimental with Denny Hamlin - Money Question: The Richmond Restart

Episode Date: April 1, 2024

Denny Hamlin and Jared Allen break down all the action from Richmond, including the race’s hottest topic – the final restart. Chandler Smith wins the NASCAR Xfinity race but Joey Gase & Dawson Cram steal the show. Why couldn't Denny go golfing on Saturday (12:30)? Did NASCAR make the right call with wet-weather tires and non-competitive cautions (16:00)? The caution for Kyle Busch hitting the wall screwed up some teams’ race strategy (25:50). It was nearly impossible to pass at the end of the race, and Denny was prepared for a third-place finish (34:00). A last-second caution gave Denny life and his pit crew crushed the money stop (41:00). Kyle Larson wrecked and came out with a better finishing position (44:50). Finally, did Denny jump the restart (47:20)? Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Man, talk about a guy that things worked out for him. I mean, that whole, you go from spinning to gaining. Yeah, and the guy that's fun him. This is a theme of the year, right, Travis? Everyone just spins out and you end up better. It's the Denny Hamlin special. The following is a production of Dirtymo Media. Hey guys, welcome to a winning edition of Actions Detrimendal Post-Richman.

Good race for the home team. That's for sure. I'm Denny Hamlin, drive the number of, 11, Mavis, Tires and Breaks, Twitter this weekend. And my co-host is Red Vest 311. I'm Jared, photographer, social media guy for Danny Hamlin. Well, that was an interesting weekend. Let's kind of start at the top.

We had an Xfinity race where Chandler Smith won. Looks like JGR kind of dominated that race. Yeah, there was some strong runs that kind of caught my eye. that, you know, what was your first kind of thoughts of the Xfinity race? I mean, we can go right to the Joey Gase. I was going to say, that kind of steals the show. It does steal the show for sure, but you got to give props to Chandler Smith and his team. Him and Eric Amarola were really, really fast.

And JGR's kind of had a grasp on that track for quite some time now. And so, you know, I noticed. Corey Hime was really, really fast in the SHR car, their same hunt car. They had some struggles on pit road that really did not allow them to, you know, ever really have a chance up front until the very end when they had some newer tires. But strong run by Corey, you know, Chandler and his team, you know, they just went up there, took the lead. You know, they had a fresher set of tires than, you know, they chose.

to come in and pit, there was kind of the strategy play there at the end of the Xfinity race where there was about 20 laps on tires, half the field decided to stay out, the other half decided to pit. You know, if there was a caution in any one of those last 50 laps, then the guys that stayed out were going to win. If it didn't fall, it was going to be, you know, the entire front running order was going to be the guys that pitted. So that's kind of how that turned out.

But Chandler got by Eric. in that run and then just kind of pulled away and held them off so um you know great run he's he's obviously you know really taking advantage of this this ride in the jgr car for sure yeah Toyota dominated this race one two three four besides wow shelding creed who obviously DNFed um but they only have five cars in the race so other than shelton creed all their cars finished yeah speaking of shelton man they're just not they're not i don't know they're running great, but they're definitely not finishing great. You know, my old engineer for many, many years, Sam McCauley's the crew chief on that team,

and I really had some high hopes for how they'd run, and they still got plenty of time in the season. But, yeah, Sheldon, he said it in his, once he exited the race, I think they had some mechanical failures. Like, he's like, man, we're just, you know, we're just not even remotely where we need to be, and we're not finishing very good, and had mechanical issues. with the car like two or three weeks in a row. So, you know, something to keep an eye on there is to watch for that. How impressive is Bubba Pollard's sixth place finish in this race to you?

I thought it was very impressive. You know, people saw that he was fastest in practice. A lot of that has to do with how quick you go out. He was one of the very first cars to go out. And Richmond is a track where when it's green, there's no rubber on the racetrack. It's always significantly faster. So I looked at his times. And, you know, because I was watching. it because I was interested to see how he was going to do. And he wasn't that fast in practice, but I think that he was definitely getting used to the car. He was for sure getting used to it. And you could see by the time he got to the end of the race, he really started to hit his stride. And it's great to see, you know, that, you know, this local short track guy. And first, you know,

you got to say a huge thank you to Dale Jr. for giving these guys opportunities, right? I mean, he's given, you know, guys that Boba Polly doesn't have any big sponsorship that he can, you know, bring with him to do this. You know, this is Dale Jr. going out in junior motorsports, getting a sponsor and saying, hey, I want to put this guy in. And I don't think it'll be the last short track guy that he gives an opportunity to race. I mean, similar to Josh Barry, right? Right. Yeah, you know, Stale Jr. taking, you know, risk upon himself or, you know, really put an emphasis on the sponsorship team to go out and. sell a race so he can go then pick whatever driver he wants to participate so i love he's giving back

to the short track community in many many ways um jr motorsports you know they've you know really said vocally and and publicly that you know they they like being that stepping stone to to some of these drivers and so drivers crew members and many others what is the transition the difficulty like coming from the late models to an ex finney car see guys from other disciplines of racing get into NASCAR all the time now. But is late models the closest or, you know, like where does that stack up? Yeah. It's certainly a lot different than anything Bubba's driven, I would imagine. I don't know how much radial tire experience he has. I think that's the biggest thing that I had to get used to going from a late model to a truck, you know,

back when I was testing a truck with, you know, Mike Stefanik was my job. driver coach, my very first driver coach. But I got in a truck and the first thing I didn't, you know, realize is how different the tire is. A radial tire, it just, it slips really quickly where a bias ply tire, and you can slide those cars quite a bit. And you see that in late models. So I thought Bubba did a fantastic job adapting and you just saw him get better and better through the race. And so I bet he'd be chomping at the bit to do this again because he'd be so far ahead of the game next time around. He'd also never been in an Xfinity car or like a Greenfly pit stop in Xfinity car to like all those other things. Yeah, I mean, and you don't know how much time he really had to prepare for this.

You don't know if he had much, if any simulator time. So regardless of whether he gets to do it again or not, I think it's just a great thing that Dale Jr. did for him. And he took the, he made the most of the situation and the best of that opportunity. So shout out to him. All right. Rate the Joey Gay's throw. So at the end of the race, we had a tift at the end of the race. Towards the end of the race, we had Dawson Cram, ran in the back of Joey Gase. And apparently, Joey, who is a car owner as well, he gave Dawson Cram his very first start, apparently in the Xenity series. And so Joey was very upset.

obviously and so he he crashed his car pretty heavily and you have to understand that the reason Joey's really upset is that you know these guys I mean they work on their own cars they they scrounge to get to the racetrack every single week it's very very difficult you know they're just trying to make a very modest living to say the least um you know by getting to the racetrack every week and you know he mentioned the financial implications he thought that that was like a 60 grand wreck for him That's probably, I would say it's probably somewhat true. You know, that car is probably destroyed.

And so they've then got to purchase another chassis, you know, fuel cell. There'll be all kinds of different things. Shocks are all gone, rear-in housing. So that's why he's upset. More so, you know, when we get upset, in the Cup Series, it has no financial implications of us other than maybe some prize money that we lost. we don't feel the pain that the car owners feel. Now, I feel it when Bubber or Tyler wrecks, I'm like, oh, gosh, dang it.

You know, I know how expensive that is. But Joey, as a race car driver and an owner, is feeling this, the double pain, which is why he took his anger out on that back bumper. And so he got out of his car. I'm sure you've seen it on social media, if you're listening to us. he finishes the back bumper's just kind of hanging off there and it's hanging by it's like a it's like molly's tooth that was hanging on by a thread and he just grabbed that thing and ripped it off and um he just it was great because you saw him walking with it and i and i immediately it caught

my attention was like oh he's he's going to chuck this at the guy i mean so he had a lot of confidence that he was going to be able to rip that last little piece off, which he did. He did. And I thought he nailed the throw. I mean, he had a little, he got a little bit of damage to Dawson's car on the right side, like on the windshield. I think it was just the tear off that kind of, like kind of split there. But it would have been awesome if he could have got it inside the car, but that would have been an impossible throw. Oh, yeah. Right, like to put it in the driver that would have been impressive. That would have been impressive.

Yeah. But I think he did the best he could with slowing up, you know, when you're walking and you're trying to approach another car under caution, and the NASCAR really frowns upon that for sure. Hopefully, I mean, this is where NASCAR needs to kind of just look away. I know that they have really been adamant on, hey, don't be walking across the track, you know, just stay by your vehicle, let's safety personnel. but I mean

Joey Gase does not need any fines or anything like that I mean just give him a call say don't ever do that again just because you know he's already you know gonna have to repair this car which is going to cost him a bunch of money so let those guys

you know let that let that be gone let us you know that doesn't need to be a story for the rest of the week and hopefully they just turned a blind eye on this one yeah actually what I'm seeing here for the first time is that Dawson Cram is now selling t-shirts with this throw on the front, and then all proceeds are going to donate life, which per Bob Pockris is a Joey Gase cause. So you can buy a t-shirt, and all the proceeds will go to charity.

And ask us your call them and say, don't do it again, but thank you for this viral moment that everyone was talking about. Yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean, they certainly ended up on the good end of that exchange for sure. but you know they again they just they don't want us crossing the racetrack when there's cars moving but i think joe did a very good job of slowing traffic down like slowly walking down and then everyone starts to it kind of makes an according effect where people are kind of oh something's going on here chicken necking like what's going on what's who's he mad at is it the guy

behind me the guy in the front of me yeah so it uh he slowly got the field to slow down so he could place that bumper on the front windshield of Dawson. So that kind of is the recap of the Xfinity race. Let's go into the cup race. We didn't really have any off-track stuff this past week, right? We had Easter. We did have Easter. That was fun.

What's Easter at the racetrack like? Yeah, I haven't had Easter at the racetrack. I don't think ever. well like actually have my Easter egg hunt things like that like we've always been home and then flew to the track we had it during uh I think the dirt wasn't it the dirt during Easter yeah yeah I do did you get on your golf course so I yes yes I had an opportunity did I go to the golf course no I had an opportunity to the whole ordeal Travis yeah Jordan took the car.

I rushed to the bus after practice and qualifying just to see that the car is missing. And what's in the car? My golf clubs. And she's the target buying things for the kids for Easter. And I'm like, hello? You knew I was golfing? And she's like, oh, well, you said you were golfing at 1.30. I says, just because I say I'm golfing at 130,

that doesn't mean I can just hit a button and be on the first tee at 130. I have to travel there. I need to warm up. Like, I can't, that means I need to leave at 12 or 12.30. Give me a few minutes to warm up, 30 minutes to get there. She's like, oh, I just, when you said you were golfing at 130, I just assumed you were leaving at 1.30. I'm like, that's just not the way things work.

And clearly why you're late to everything. So, no, Travis, I don't know what. time it was. I don't recall the timing of all this, but Jordan did get back to the bus and she was like, I rushed back to here so you could go golf then, Denny was like, I don't think I'm going to go anymore. I can only play like 15 holes. Right. I was going to be short three holes. The guys that I were playing with, they teed off at like 105 and I knew that it was going to be a stretch to get there. And then I'm like, oh, I got to get there. Then I got to drive around three holes, go meet up with them. And I'm like, I just want to sit here and watch this Xfinity race. And I had to be back.

I had to do a Fox thing, shoot anyway at 630. And I didn't want to be late for that. So I just, once I lost a momentum, I got, you saw, I got dressed. I was ready. I had my golf shoes on and everything sitting in your golf shoes on. Yeah. Yeah. Why do you have your golf shoes on? You put those on and you get there. No, golf shoes nowadays. They're like, they're like sneakers. They're not like, you know, the spikes that you use. They are. like sneakers. Yeah, they're like sneakers. So I was ready and then the minute I sat down and was waiting for her to get back, it was, I just lost it. I was like, eh, well, I guess I'm just not going to go. So lost motivation for sure. And then I was like, well, maybe I can go Sunday

morning, play little 8 a.m. golf, be back by 12. The MRO is having their brunch at 12 to 1.000. then I could do the Easter egg hunt at 130 and then that was like no that's just that's a long day so didn't golf at all damn it but I appreciate everyone that made an effort to get me on quite a few of my friends

Noah Gregson actually called me says hey I'm on the way there this is on Friday he's like do you need to get on I'm like yeah send me the number to the guy there were several DMs I saw that that were offering to get me on so I appreciate that I will take advantage and do that.

I'll do that in the fall. On to the cup race. On to the cup race. So we started in wet weather for the first time on a point paying, I hate it when they say, oh, this is the first time.

It's not the first time. We did it at North Worksboro. The trucks did it at Martinsville. It's just anything that can make. Headlines. A history headline. Not that anyone cares. But I would just say it was definitely, I was a little timid.

I had a little Fox interview before, and I mentioned to them, it's like, you know, this is a tough thing for probably the 30% of the drivers actually think they can win today in the dry conditions. We know it's going to be a dry race eventually. And so how hard do you push it when you get to these into the wet weather? Because you can make a mistake that then, while I'm out of the race and I never even get to race in the dry. and never know, you know, this is an important race coming down the stretch later in the season. So I want to make sure that I keep my car intact when we get to the dry. So I never really push it much in the wet.

Certainly didn't hear, but I held my position. I was happy with just holding my position. But it was interesting for sure. I thought that the cars handled pretty well on it. It certainly did not like paint where you're searching for paint. paint in the dry. You do not want to be anywhere near it in the wet. It's just really slick. I thought about that. I was out on a run. I don't know, whenever it was this weekend. And I was running along the side of the road and I stepped on the paint and it was wet. And I was like,

oh, Denny said you like wanted to put your tires on this and you had more grip. But I don't feel anymore. Did you think your shoes were tires? I thought, I mean, kind of the same, same idea, right? No. No. No. Aren't the bottom of your shoes rubber? Yeah, but it's not hot. It's not hot. Those tires are 200-something degrees. Well, nonetheless, I thought about what you said in a real-life situation, and the paint was slipper, slipperier.

Okay. Have you walked a track that has rubber on paint? Not that I can recall. Yeah, it's just do it one time. It's pretty sticky. All right. That's, but yes. it's no different than being on a sidewalk when it's icy.

It is, you do not, when it is wet, you do not want to be on it at all. So I thought all the drivers did a fantastic job. The racing was, it looked pretty entertaining for sure. Travis, you're saying some people did not love, you know, kind of that competition caution when it was thrown. I mean, I thought it was dumb and then you drive around for 17 laps. Why did you think it was dumb? you guys are are you not at like your pick you have

pit crews like let's have real like they're like they might not be safe tell the drivers are like not drive so fast like figure it out like you guys are athletes like yeah but you've also pitted in wet weather rain tires before we have yeah

listen I it's hard for me to say I see y'all's point that hey we'll just we should just figure it out. But it's one car sliding through pit road, take wiping out a crew guy

away from being a shit show and then we're saying that NASCAR made a stupid move. And so I get it. So I'm okay with them tiptoeing into this whole wet weather thing. Now, I do think they should have let us go longer. Like the track was just drying out.

And what you were going to see is the tires were going to start to wear off and wear out. And then you were going to see the big disparity in lap times. And you were going to see a ton of passing. Had that thing gone 15, 20 more laps, you would have seen passing like you saw Bristol. So I would have liked to seen them run it a little longer,

not just as soon as they see the tracks getting dry, you know, throw that competition caution. You see it's an F1 at the start of the races. When is somebody going to pit to make that move to the slicks and get that advantage. So then you would have seen, does a driver that doesn't maybe have a chance, all right, let me go for it,

go in a pit a little early, put the slicks on and see if it pays off. Like you would have had more strategy coming to play. Yeah, for sure. You would have. But I don't think TV minds a break early on. I think that they're always going to be a little more, anxious to get cautions early in races, get some of those commercials over with.

You want to, you know, not lose your fan base. It's been proven through data that anytime you have a long green flag run at the beginning of a race, it's not necessarily a good thing for your audience. So I think that they did what they thought was the best thing at the time. If they had to do it all over again, you heard Elton Sawyer say, yeah, we'd do a few things different here and there. But overall, I didn't have a big problem with it. Just because the pit road was very wet, for sure. Now, we were on wet weather tires. We could have handled it, yes. I'm not really sure. I guess it would have been fine. But man, it's just, it's a risk for sure. Now, I'll tell you,

they wanted us to start in wet weather for sure. They didn't even attempt to put the jet dryers on the racetrack to start. Like they wanted it to be wet. You know, I guess the critique was, and I heard on the teardown, is that, well, why didn't you have the pit lane ready then? The reason they'd have the pit lane ready is because the cars are sitting there on the pit lane. So, you know, do you maybe stage the cars differently pre-race so you can work on pit road?

Maybe that could be an option. Can you close pit road? The first 30, 40 laps in dry pit road while the race is going on? Yeah, but what happens in an emergency situation where someone needs to get to their pit stall? Well, then you handle that, you know. Like it's not closed closed, right? It's closed to competition. Well, they can't be driving against trap.

Three dread dryers coming at their face. Well, what's an emergency? A tire. A car on fire. Like that, then the caution comes out and, you know, you open pit road. I thought you mean like a driver has to get out of his car immediately. because there's like a health emergency. I see what you're saying is that, hey, while the racing is going on, why aren't you

drying pit road? Or at least making progress. Because picker you guys are out there with their squeegees and stuff. Yeah. I'm not sure. I think it's because you've got to leave the access to pit road open at all times. Let me ask you this. Could they've gone, just have you guys gone under caution a few laps before it actually

starts to give them a minute out there to dry it off before the race actually goes green? yeah i don't know when they started working on pit road to begin with was it at that lap 30 like i don't even know how they had they even put jet dryers on on the pit lane until lap 30 if that was the case then they made they should have been on the pit lane while we were warming up like getting ready to go for sure so i don't know that answer so

regardless i mean i thought that you know the whole thing worked out nicely. I swear to God, I wish we race tires like the wet weather tires. They're so soft. They wear out so quickly. It's awesome.

Before we move on from this, you said you were worried about making a mistake that could cost you the race so you didn't get the race on the slicks. Now that you say you wish the tires were more like the wet weather tires,

like what type of mistake are you trying to avoid? Are you tiptoeing around the racetrack? Yeah. Well, yeah. I mean, it's like skiing. like you're always right on the edge of, you know, busting your ass. It's just, yeah, when it's wet, it's just you easily could lock up a tire.

It goes straight and you hit the wall. Like there was many times where I was crossing over some, the dash lines in the track. And, I mean, the car was just spinning big. So it was like you're just always on edge for sure. So the grip in the wet weather tires is only just enough to get you around the track. Right. Yeah, it's about two seconds slower. It was about two to three seconds slower than what we were in the dry.

I was actually surprised it was handling the wet weather that well. But the track did dry super quick. But on a scale to zero to ten, if a slick tire is zero, you have zero grip, zero confidence driving it and wet. Well, a ten, you guys say ten is dry. I'm very confident in how I need to drive. Right. in the dry. I would say the wet weather tires is like a five or six for me personally.

So I'm always kind of testing it. And with enough reps, you know, I surely would get better at it. More drivers, some other drivers are more confident. They've run in the wet more than I have. So, or they've definitely run in wet in different series. So they feel more confident knowing how hard they can break without locking tires. up how hard they can hit the gas without spinning them. All that comes with time and drivers all start to figure it out.

And really, by the time the track started getting dry, I felt pretty comfortable in what I would have had. Right. So as the race played out here, next major event is Kyle Busch spinning, bringing out the caution towards the end of stage two, which really kind of... He didn't spin, right? They hit the wall. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, there was, you know, some discussion on that for sure. Scraped the wall. Yeah, I mean, this is, you know, this certainly had a factor in some people's days when it came to their strategy. They didn't get their strategy didn't get to play out because of this wreck or this scrape of the wall. But it's, yeah, I don't know. I mean, we've thrown cautions for cars going up and scraping the wall before, but we've also not thrown cautions when some other major shit is going on.

So I don't know. I mean, it's a tough, tough thing to do. Certainly could they, you know, saw that the eight was okay and he came back down in the racing groove and appeared he was taken back off again. Could they have held on a little bit? but I just, you know, just my intuition tells me they probably were at a point of the race where they were, you know, we were in the middle of a long green flag run. They didn't mind a caution.

And I think they were looking for a little break at that moment. So in previous races, they have decided, NASCAR has decided not to throw the caution because it would affect cycle on pit road. Yeah. So this was a little different because the reason. they don't want to affect green flag cycles, right, is that usually that's a window of about four to five laps where everyone will pit. The interesting thing with Richmond is it did not matter. The cycle was 40 laps wide. So you had cars pitting it so many various times that it wasn't really a defined pit road green flag cycle. There was no cycle. There was no cycle.

really defined. So, you know, it wasn't a fuel thing. People were just pitting when they thought it was best for them to pit, whether it be to, you know, to get tires, maybe they're starting to slow down, whatever it might be, right? So I think that that's why they threw this caution is that it wasn't going to trap a lot of cars a lap down. They saw a car up against the wall. Caution. I don't know that they're really thinking about, well, who's on pit road, who's. who's going to get screwed by this. Like, they don't have time to really think about that. They just saw a car up at the wall and threw a caution.

And they knew it wasn't right in the middle of a green flag cycle. Like Larson had already pitted, but it screwed him up. So it's not like he hadn't pitted yet where it's in the middle of that cycle. He'd pitted, but he needed it to keep going green to help him out. Right, right. And that's kind of how this strategy works in NASCAR, right? Is that when you go off cycle and we did it towards the end of the race, when you go long or you go short, you need it to go,

if you go long, you need this thing to go green all the way. If you go short, you want cautions to come out as quick as possible. That's basically the summary of how this goes. So those who pitted right away, a caution helps you. If you pit late, you need that entire time to make it all that ground back up because you think you're going to make it up on the back end of the run. That's where the 11 car was really fast at the end of the race is that we went long and then that whole last run we were just marching right to the front but we needed that entire cycle to go green um which it did so uh that's kind of why you know if if someone probably went long and larsen i guess probably pitted that's why they lost track position is because they you know they they're willing to lose five six spots on the

front end knowing they're going to be faster the entire run and they plan on making those five, six spots up plus more on at the end of the run. But when it doesn't go all the way, you can definitely get burnt by a caution. So I wish Freddie was here because I assume that he's probably going to it all over this decision to throw the caution based on what he said about caution's last couple weeks. I mean, those guys complain about everything over at DVC, but yeah. However, now that I'm listening to you is that you really can't, you don't want NASCAR. thinking about driver strategies and when they throw the caution. No.

Big windows because then there really is no strategy. Right. Yeah. If a driver and if a team knows that, oh, NASCAR is not going to throw a, you know, a tiki tack caution at some point in this 60 lap run. The only time we know they're not going to throw a ticket to act caution is right in the middle of a defined green flag cycle where everyone's out of fuel and everyone's coming to pit in this in this three to four lap window.

That's when they absolutely do not want to. to throw a tic-y-tack caution and this is not that this just was not that no so um you had you know at that point of the race you know the kind of the car is defining who was going to be challengers up front you had the 1922 5 11 20 before he had he had a pit road issue correct speeding speeding penalty yeah that's as such a killer for sure um the 23 is up towards the front as well um so it was starting to show like who is going to be the contenders for the win at that point. And so, you know, we go to end to stage three. And that's when I think we came out second or third.

Third. Third. Okay. And then, yeah, me and Lugano had a side-by-side battle for like five laps. I mean, we were like inches off of each other, maybe not even. And so that kind of singled out. and so we decided at that point that, okay, we're going to make this a two-stop race. So we pitted on the front end, the first pit stop.

But then on the second one, we thought that the leaders just pitted too soon. And so we certainly were a little caught off guard by that. But then, you know, it's like Chris Gabriel-Heart says, it's just a math equation for us to figure out. Now, if you're going to go long, you have to do a couple things really. well. You have to really be good in the long run. You can't be bleeding time. Now, everyone's going to be slow. You're going to be slower when you're staying out and there's new and there's cars on new tires. They're going to blow by you. But it's really about, you know, how can you optimize your time? I feel like I do a pretty decent job at that. And then Chris kind of, you know, immediately when he

keeps me out there, doesn't say a word to me over a lap later after I saw those leaders pit. I knew what he was doing at that point. And it's like, okay. I mean, it's like every Richmond race, isn't it? Pretty much. It is. But it's them. It's not us. They're the ones who, what we deem is, you know, they're trying to jump each other in F1, as they call undercut the competition.

So they're trying to pit one lap before to then jump in front of this car. And then the clean air is going to take over. Rarson and Truex. Right. They're trying to undercut each other. And that just leaves. opportunity for someone running third or fourth like myself to say well no we're we're just going to split this thing up evenly and we'll catch you guys on the backside of that which we did so yeah it it

i thought that we had the race in the back 30 40 to go or 25 to 30 to go i then saw true x on the same straight away or just he was kind of entering three i'm coming off two and i knew the rate of what how fast we were passing everyone was so high. I think we pitted 10 laps after the bulk of the field. I thought it was pretty much in the bag. And it was right until I called the 22. And, you know, it was interesting that the 22 was a couple seconds off of the 19. But the 19 was in some heavy, heavy traffic there at the end.

And it was slowing him up quite a bit. the 22 hit the rocket booster button as soon as I got to him and he picked up speed and that made it really difficult for me to pass them even though I had 10-lop fresher tires it just did not matter the aerodynamics were just too much you know for me to overcome and yeah I just was sitting there behind them and I was frustrated as hell I was like damn it my run has stalled I thought you know I'd see we're catching the 19 but I just can't get around this 22 and man, I thought we were going to finish third until that last caution. Yeah, and he's certainly not going to let you by for the same reason that you won the race.

If a caution comes out, every spot matters at the end of this race. Yeah, everyone's fighting for all their track position for sure. And so especially that late in the race, I think I caught him with probably 15 to go or so. He's thinking, well, I can surely airblock for this amount of time. It just so happens. He was also catching the 19. along with it. So his motivation is,

well, not only am I going to hold you off, I'm going to go up here and chase this 19 down. So his mentality changes from, I'm going to try to hold on to second to I'm going to try to win this race and catch Truex, which he got close. Yeah, so if you're catching him

and then he realized, oh, now I'm catching Truex, why are you both not? All right, let's go catch Truex together. Like, why he's gaining him? on Truex with 10 laps to go. Why are you also not gaining on him and Truex at the same rate? Because once you get within two car links or three car links on this car, you just lose all the grip.

You know, the tires don't have enough grip in them or there's not enough variation in lap time. I saw a stat on X that says this is the closest finish in NASCAR history. did you know that? No. First to last. Oh, first to last. First to last. Do you want to know why?

We can't even pass f***ing lap cars. Like, everyone runs the same speed. Right, but you're cutting in and out of lap traffic and the, you know, the guy running seven, the guy running six. Truex wasn't he? I mean, he was stuck behind everyone. But you were on that strategy. I was, but as soon as I got to the 22 and I'm. made a little bit of a push to get around them like I'm like I'm going to push it here really

be hard on on the car and you didn't make it it got hot everything got hot and then it was over yeah it just the the run stopped we all equalized to the same lap time so everyone else is just significantly easier to pass up to Joey and yeah yep um if you notice we we passed a lot of cars and then I had open racetrack, and then I caught Joey pretty quickly in that open racetrack. But then we all started catching lap cars together. So then, you know, if it's just me and him on the racetrack, I can always go somewhere different than he's not.

So say he's running the high line or the middle line, I can run low. I'll get clean air that way. Or maybe he's running low, I'll just go to the mid. The problem is we started catching lap cars, and he was just going where the lap cars weren't. So then I had no clean air. there was no clean air lines to run. And so we've seen this next gen car repeatedly. We keep talking about it. And we're going to talk about it this week at Martinsville as well. On racetracks that have one groove or one and a half grooves, it does not race well.

The only way it races well is because on a mile and a half, you can go somewhere else. You can go run a different line than someone else to get clean air. These cars in traffic are horrendous. They're the worst car by far in traffic than what we've ever had. A lot of it is because we have, you know, tires that are pretty damn hard. The one at Richmond, I looked at the left side wares and they just, they're not wearing. So Goodyear has to get more aggressive on left side tires at least to get more wear in the damn cars because we're all equal and out. And it's all, like I told you,

when I pushed to get around the 22, I didn't wear the tires out more. I just got them hotter. And the minute I got them hotter, done. The run was done. So it's all about heat in these cars. And so because everyone's tires wear

pretty much at the same rate. So NASCAR 101, tires get hotter, grip goes away? Yeah, yeah, certainly. We definitely, rather than be cooler than hotter. and that's why you see lap times where we all fall off a second to a, you know, one point, I think the fall off really was around 1.3 seconds or so from fast lap to end of run speed. That's pretty low for Richmond.

I mean, I remember running 26 second lap times there a few years ago. We were running, you know, low 2024s. at the end when they all were going long and i or when i went long i was running like 2014s which is you know i was on a run in 2080s by my you know in clean track so that's not a big disparity of speed and we're all we're all falling off at the same rate because all of our tires are getting hot at the same rate um so yeah if you had more tire wear we it's been proven now we've seen what what tire wear does at bristol it creates huge disparity and speed. So I think that, you know, good ears trying. They're coming, they keep coming back with,

you know, more gauge. They're trying to get more heat in the car or in the tire. They need to get way more aggressive than what they've got. This Phoenix slash Richmond tire needs, needs to be considerably more softer than what it is. Did you think this race was going to have a caution with two to go? I did not. I have. I have. had conceded to my third place finish. I was pretty content with it. I was like pretty bummed because with 10 to go, I'm thinking I still got a shot to win. But once, you know, I realized I'd pushed all I could get out of it. I knew that we were going to finish third. But when the caution came out, I'm like, I'm always torn on a late race caution because you can definitely can go both ways.

You can definitely lose spots. But I was in a good enough spot where I'm like, oh, well, I know my pit crew is pretty damn good. So as long as I do my job on pit road as well as they do theirs, then we're going to have a shot to come out pretty good. Now, the advantage for us, too, is that we were racing the 19 and the 22 in front of us that did not have the number one stall. Had either one of them had the number one stall, it would have been very difficult for us to overtake them.

but for them being just on pit road in normal stalls, it was going to be a heads-up competition because the 19 came on pit road. When you think about how we're lined up, he's the leader, 22 second, I'm third. I'm probably, what's that? Maybe seven, eight tents behind, you know, behind the 19, you know, that gap.

I'm thinking, yeah, my pit crew can get a half a second. Maybe I can get three or four tents through my rolling speed or whatever it might be, and we can be right there side by side with them coming off pit road. But I realized halfway through the pit stall, the pit stop, that, oh, wow, this is like three and a half seconds, and they've already dropped a jack on the right. So I knew that we were in for a heater of a stop.

And then at that point, I'm thinking, rev it up, rev it up, do not stall this thing because the most embarrassing thing I could have possibly done is those guys knock out like an 8-5, and then I stall, leaving the pit stall. That would have sucked so bad. So I made sure I didn't do that. So if anything, I overread it, spun the tires a little bit too much. But yeah, I could see their excitement, and I could hear Chris Gavehart clearing me out. And I knew because they had pitted before me, then you hadn't seen them pass yet. I hadn't seen them pass me, so this was ours. So this was your pit crew, 8.99.

Truex's was 10.29, Lugano 10.29. Yeah, it's, I mean, we, we got to buy a second. They had an 8.79 earlier in the day. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's really difficult to, I mean, the money stops. When they know that this is for the race win, I'm sure the pressure is super high, but this team, they've been together now for three years. They've gelled amazing. I mean, this is one of the youngest groups on Pitt Road.

Just, FYI, this used to be Truax's pick, his pit crew. He wasn't really happy with him a few years ago. So they made a change, but they were really young. I mean, they're already, I looked at last year, their average age, I think if you take out the fuel, it's like 27 years old. They're very young when you think about how age some of the pit crews are, especially the fast ones. But now this is three years in a row they got to work together. So they're finally hitting their stride, and it couldn't come with a better time for me, for sure. You mentioned the pit stalls for each of these cars.

This was actually then the perfect storm of a caution for you, because if it wasn't a caution for the five car, he has the number one pit stall. Surely he wins that race off pit road because he was in fourth. Oh, he was? Yeah, he would have had a, yeah, had they knocked out at 8-5? Yeah, they probably, I mean,

I don't know how many lap cars were between us, though. That was the only X-factor, right? because you can't pull up to pit. Sure. So if we had three lap cars between us, you know, the gap would have been even more. But, but yeah, he would have been in the picture for sure. Major factor, none of the last. Major factor. But, man, talk about a guy that things worked out for him. I mean, that whole, you go from spinning to gaining.

Yeah, and the guy that's fun him. This is the theme of the year, right, Travis? Everyone just spins out. You end up better. It's the Denny Ham one special. Yeah, surely. but no i mean i you know you kind of look at that accident and you could see where now that was a very vulnerable spark part of the racetrack where larsen got really loose off of turn four you could see he got clear of bubba and then started getting loose and then checked up and then bubba was right on him and so um it was good to see bubba come over there

and least apologize to him and you know whether he's right or wrong it doesn't matter at least you show that like hey sorry about that yeah i didn't mean to get into you but But Kyle looked like he was, he was pretty happy after the race. Like he was, you know, he got, yeah, he's got spun out with two to go and still finished well. What do you think of the caution, though, being called? Was it quick? Oh, I had to be caught. He was spinning through the infield.

It seemed like he gathered himself really fast. I only saw the slow-mo. Sorry. I didn't see it in total real time. I think that's a caution no matter what. Yeah. He's heading towards the inside wall. It's a caution

And It has been 15 weeks I thought I saw Trey Ryan 99 on X Give me a shout out He's a great stat guy 14 or 15 weeks Since we've had a green white checkered

NASCAR was ready They're ready for one Especially at Richmond Right I mean It was a track where We all could catch each other But we all just can't

No one could pass and you saw, I saw Parker Cleggerman say during the race. He was tweeting during it. He says, well, all the leaders are in the screen. Now, we haven't seen anyone pass today, but at least they're all on the screen. So, I mean, that's what, you know,

Jim wants 101 right there. It's just more cars in the picture. Now they're not going to pass each other, but they're going to make you believe they can. Yeah. Were you surprised that a couple cars didn't try to stay out and see if they could do something.

I was actually surprised there were no two tire stops. Yeah, I was a little shocked with that for sure. But I was loving the four tire call. As long as everyone took four, then we're going to be able to dictate that restart. So NASCAR got their green white checker they were looking for because now it's the only thing that they're talking about. Yep.

So the money question. What are they talking about? Did you jump the restart? I went pretty early in the zone. What? No, that I just thought you were going to continue your thought. No, it's a zone. It's a restart zone.

Right. Anybody know what the definition of zone is? I bet Josh Wise does. He had a pretty good couple of tweets. What did Josh Wise say? Josh Wise is the Chevy driver coach. He's the one that kind of all these guys go to. He's the teacher for all these Chevy drivers.

He's made a hell of a career. for himself outside of racing. He raced for many, many years, and him and Scott Speed have just done a tremendous job being driver coaches for the whole Chevrolet group. But what do you say? It's a little thread here. So NASCAR is always allowed flexibility on the restart box entry.

There would be dozens of wins overturned if they had a hard line in this. Late race, green, white checkered. It's well known, especially in the Cup series, fire early. For those asking why there's a painted line, I'm not referring to that as the hard line for those reading that literally.

In my opinion, I think flexibility is needed and Denny didn't stretch this any more than what we see in other weeks. Just to be clear to many other responses, I am not responsible for the creation or enforcement of the rules, only offering an observation. Did he have an attorney write that up?

That was really well said. Fan said, not to mention, Turek's backed up to try to get a good run for himself. Yeah. And he calls himself and Josh said exactly. If there isn't some soft flexibility on the box, P2 can solve for all the leaders of launch options. Yeah, it's as if me and Josh are reading the same book, for sure.

I agree with him. I mean, I clearly agreed with him because certainly if you fire in a zone that they know you're going to fire in, let's not even say a zone, in a spot, if they know you're going to fire in a spot, they can actually fire before you. and it on TV will not look like they did. I concede that on TV it looks worse than what it felt like in the car. Now, a lot of the reason of that is that when I'm restarting the race, I'm not looking at the flagman, I'm not looking at my dash, I'm not looking at anything.

All I'm looking at is my mirror and my side peripheral. So all I'm doing is trying to time this person's run, you know, at what speed is the outside car going, and then I'm looking in the mirror to see, okay, how close is the car behind me? And clearly, Joey is laying back. And, you know, if we really want to get into technicalities, you should not be laying back. But you laid back enough to where I could see him start to creep towards me. Now, at that point, I'm thinking in my head, I'm not going to let him roll to me and then as soon as the gap closes, take off. Because then he's got an advantage.

He's going to be pushing me. He's going to pull out of line. He dictated the restart, not me. And the same with the 19. I saw him, he was back right around my door and I saw him creeping forward. and just understand that every mile per hour that you start quicker, you're that same mile per hour faster all the way until we lift. So all the way down the front straightaway, you've got that one mile per hour advantage.

So I don't want to give up the advantage of being the leader. So at that point, I see the restart zone. I'm coming off of turn four and all I'm doing is looking mirror. side, mirror side. And I guarantee you can go to my end car and you'll see my eyes just kind of bouncing between the two. And I'm mostly looking to the right. And I'm looking at the left front fender on the 19 car. And at that point, I just, when I see him starting to creep, I'm like, I take off. So I don't see where I'm at in the zone. And so I concede definitely that it is a few feet early. So, but it's, again, I don't think that's ever been a hard line like Josh is talking

about. Many, many late race restarts have been fired really early because if you, if you wait until you get to the zone, you lost all your advantage to the cars that around you because they know he's going to fire then. Okay, I'm going to slow my speed down now and creep it up. So that I'm running a couple miles an hour faster than him when I get to that zone. So I tried to negate the advantage that those guys were trying to get on me on that last restart. So what are you going to say to Truex or what is Coach Gibbs going to say today in the competition meeting? How is that going to go over? I asked Truex.

I said, I said, I texted him. I says, am I missing something of why you're so upset? I don't know. Well, they didn't win the race after leading. 200 plus laps. And I'll paraphrase it for you. He says, no, we're all good. I just lost my mind.

That's all he's, that's what he said, paraphrasing. He's like, no, I just, you're fine. I just, I lost my mind there for a minute. And I, and my response is that, well, rightfully so. He obviously deserved to win the race. He had the race won. But surely that was a bad five minutes for him and the 19 team. Yeah, he then doored Larson a few times.

Yeah, he was bumped into the rear view after the checkered. Yeah. Travis, you asked me, you showed me a video when they were coming out. Was that a green flag cycle where the five kind of veered out and cut them off on the exit? I believe so on the pit road. He kind of just went up, pushed him up a little bit. And I think he would have had him anyways, but I didn't know if that kind of pissed off tricks. And he's like, you know what?

I'm in a mad mood. I'm not happy with Larson already. Let's get him. And then I'll get Danny. Well, we got to understand, too, that, you know, Truex has dominated this race. I think six times, did I read that? Six times you let over 100 laps. She's shaking her head.

Six times you let over 100 laps and did not win this race. So I, I mean, that sounds like Martinsville for me. It's painful. It sucks because you do everything right and then something out of your control takes you out. So like I said to him, understandably so. Like you deserve to be upset. So there will probably be no B for whatnot in the competition meeting today. No, I mean, I think it's just, you know, James Small, his crew chief is a very emotional guy.

And I think Martin gets emotional behind in the headset. Nothing like Ryan Blaney. He loses his psycho. He goes psycho when he gets in the car for sure. but it's it's entertaining for us to hear those things it it really is when they kind of play it back on radioactive on tuesdays on race hub there's your plug um but it's uh martin just he had the race slip right through his hands right and it's nothing that he did he didn't do a damn thing wrong he just he got ping ponged around you know he had an unfortunate caution he got let down a little

bit on pit road. I don't know where they let him down or they just, we just beat them, right? I don't know, where do you characterize this? I think that we just beat them, right? I wouldn't say that they lost it more than we won it. I mean, that final pit stop was slow. Yeah, it looked like all the times on the pit lap tracker was a little slow. I think the official time for like an eight, six for us and a 99 for those other two guys. Still, 9-9 is very middle of the road, for sure. But you're leading the race. Usually a 99 will keep you there.

But I don't know. I need to look at kind of all the metrics to see. Yellow line to yellow line. How did we all do? So it's more than just the pit stop for sure. I don't know if you've noticed this, but since the start of 2024, you've, your villain era,

trajectory has taken more of like a hero era in recent weeks. Like I feel like you've had more cheers than booze. But we're going to Martinsville next week. You are going to get booed the shit out of now after this. Yeah. Why would I do wrong? I cheated. You cheated.

Come on, man. I agree with you. I thought Richmond was a nice, nice crowd. I appreciate you, Richmond. I saw a lot of DH gear. A lot of all-in shirts. Yeah. Hometown cooking, man.

I love, love Richmond. Just stop drawing mustaches on, didn't he? That's all. Yeah, I saw someone from NASCAR posted an update. There was, there's graffiti all over my picture. But I thought, I think that's entertaining. Update after last night? Yeah.

Have you seen it? No. Yeah, there's, I'll find that. There's a lot of stuff. on there. But there's a lot of positive messages on it as well. And I appreciate you. Just so you know, when you

wrote those positive messages that we did see, Jared had me stop in that tunnel. He's like, hey, this is where that picture is where they drew a mustache on you. I was like, oh, let's stop and see it. This was after the Xfini race, everyone was gone. I

saw a lot of good messages in there. I mean, there was some negative too, but there were some negative from other drivers that was pretty obscene as well. Absolutely. So I think that I didn't realize that that is a Richmond thing where I talked to Julie, the track president. She's like, yeah, they typically write on our walls and we always kind of repaint them,

but I think we're just going to kind of let this go at this point. Right. As I told you, this has been a thing for the last handful of years. You always have a face. Someone always draws a face on you and they erase it and they draw it back. Okay. Always. Well, if someone, if you see that I've got a face that's very, I know my face is unappealing as it is, but it, could someone go over it and make it more appealing?

Maybe you see like they put a not very handsome mustache on me and you're like, oh, that's not a good look. Let me pretty this up. Let me fill that in. You know, so maybe my fans could help me out there. Perhaps. Yeah. It's a request, I guess. So, yeah, I saw that.

It was cool. I did think the Richmond crowd, yeah, I thought that when I came out for intros, it was 50-50? Yeah, I mean, you doing the red carpet walk

to driver intros. I mean, you can't, you don't, there's not enough time for you to stop and sign every autograph. I signed a girl's face.

Yeah, I have a great photo of that. Is it still on my story? It should be, right? This time of day. Yeah. This,

this was a first. This was a first for me. I've never signed it. I've signed a forehead. That's weird. But this, this very beautiful girl says, why don't you, I want you sign my cheek. I want my cheek sign. And the bad part is I didn't give her a very good signature.

It'll be interesting. Yeah, going to Martinsville, you think we're going to swing this crowd back to 7030, 80, 20, 90, 10. You're already not well-like there to begin. Well, hey, I'll appreciate any cheers. I get this weekend. I appreciate the booze as well. So keep them coming.

This review. Go ahead. Now, give me a review. This review comes from Jimmy Clements. Love the podcast. It's my favorite. And anytime I see a FedEx truck, I say, Denny Hamlin is the man.

Oh, thank you. Jimmy Clements is not Jeremy Clements' dad. Is it? No, probably not. Today, we were leaving the airport. We just, we flew back this morning. It was too late to bring the kids home last night. and it was so late anyway.

Molly was sitting in the truck and we were right next to a FedEx plane. She's like, Daddy, FedEx! I said, yeah, what's in there? She's like, boxes. I was like, yeah, that's pretty much right. So I love that hearing that from fans that like every time they see a FedEx truck

or whatever they think us. You will see, by the way, FedEx, you're going to see a lot of them in the playoffs. You know, they know that we make the playoffs. We make runs in the playoffs So you'll see a lot of FedEx cars When it comes to the playoffs By the way, that's good on Molly

Because there was another plane sitting there And she must not recognize that one. Not at all. And it was poo-poo Brown. So let's go to Richmond, or go to Richmond. Let's go to Martinsville. Get another one.

We need another one. Be sure to rate, review, follow wherever we get your podcast, and don't forget to subscribe to Actions Detrimental on YouTube. All right, appreciate you all tuning in. We'll see you next week. Check out Dirtymo Media.

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