Denny Hamlin has four wins so far in the 2020 NASCAR Cup Series season, but you still have to feel gutted by his luck in Sunday’s Big Machine Hand Sanitizer 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
Hamlin had the lead and looked to have his first victory at the iconic speedway in hand, then, with seven laps left, a right front tire let go and sent Hamlin hard into the wall.
.@DennyHamlin crashes from the lead at @IMS!
Watch the finish NOW on @NBC. #Brickyard400 #NBCRacingWeekend pic.twitter.com/82KcHBXwzn
— NASCAR on NBC (@NASCARonNBC) July 6, 2020
After the hard impact, Hamlin skidded to a fiery halt on the apron of the 2.5-mile speedway and was done for the day after leading 19 laps.
2 Responses
Toby, check the video footage. I know as a writer, and the same as a broadcast commentator it is quick and easy to throw down a normal reaction to an action. But if you look at the footage, i dont believe that was a part from a tire flying off of Hamlins car. At the same point the car begins to veer toward the wall, you see something else flying off of the car. Something else broke, coupled with #20 Eric Jones wreck, combined with both cars having significantly more fire than a usually hard wall corner impact suggests power steering fluid and possible failure in that area. I know with the tight schedule that Nascar runs from week to week that its easy to scrap the car and the incident and move on rather to dive in further and investigate what really happened to both cars. Denny had this one in the bag and those tires werent that old. I hope you can show videos to the right folks at JGR and TRD and get closer to helping Denny identify what happened and give him more confidence to climb back into the championship swing for the year. Thanks
Hey Marc, from the looks of the video, the piece that flies off of Hamlin appears to be one of the flaps on the hood designed to keep the car from going airborne when spinning. The tire shredded and ripped the flap out just before the car veered toward the wall.