Denny Hamlin believes NASCAR fans have got it | Sports News

The NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs got off to a tough begin for Hendrick Motorsports, with a pissed off Chase Elliott ending the Cook Out Southern 500 a team-best seventeenth within the No. 9 Chevrolet, whereas Kyle Larson got here home in nineteenth, William Byron in twenty first, and Alex Bowman rounded out a forgettable night in thirty first.

The end result leaves Bowman, who was held back partly by a nightmare 40-second pit stop, 19 factors beneath the cutoff line for the Round of 12 with two races to go. Meanwhile, Elliott is simply 9 factors above the road heading to World Wide Technology Raceway, with Byron 25 factors clear, and Larson 38 clear up in third.

Despite their underwhelming showings at Darlington Raceway, Joe Gibbs Racing’s Denny Hamlin, who’s at the moment second within the factors standings within the No. 11 Toyota, believes some fans are blowing the state of affairs out of proportion.

While the 23XI Racing co-owner admitted that “the result was bad,” within the newest episode of his ‘Action’s Detrimental’ podcast, he maintains that Hendrick is “better than that.”

“I think the fans are getting a little too overzealous on like, ‘Wow, they performed 17th or worse.’ They did not,” Hamlin stated. “The 9 obviously got caught on his strategy, unfortunately, by that yellow, that hurt him. 

“Larson more than likely had tow link damage, if I had to guess. Byron wasn’t good. And then the 48, I don’t know…was he any good anyway? Surely it (the pit road incident) changed his result, but I just don’t know whether the 48 was really going to be that good anyway.”

While Hamlin, who crossed the road in seventh, might not see any purpose for these at Hendrick’s HQ to panic, the workforce was clearly pissed off by how its weekend performed out. 

After the race, workforce Vice President of Competition, Chad Knaus, stated in an interview with Motorsport that “Obviously, we just didn’t have the speed we needed to, which was a little disappointing. Overall, we were just missing a little bit of front turn.

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“Our drivers were not able to turn into the corner as well as what they needed to carry the amount of speed they needed to. So, we have to get to work and see if we can try to figure out that balance issue and kind of move forward.”

Knaus additionally gave his ideas on Bowman’s disastrous stop, which noticed confusion seem to reign supreme over the crew due to air gun points.

Knaus admitted that “It definitely looked pretty bad,” happening so as to add, “We’ll get it home and we’ll have a talk on that and understand what’s going on. We just, some people like to do things a little bit differently than others.

“You know, we only get one spare pit gun per pit box. So how that sits and how it’s arranged varies sometimes from team-to-team, and we probably need to get our heads wrapped around that and get a collective decision and direction on all of that so we can move forward there as well.”

Thankfully for Hendrick, there isn’t long to attend till the Cup Series descends on WWTR for the Enjoy Illinois 300 on Sunday, the place Larson, Elliott, and Byron all completed within the highest 15 final season, with Bowman down in twenty eighth. To date, in three earlier iterations, Hendrick has but to win the 300.