Denny Hamlin, who won this past weekend’s NASCAR Cup Series Cook Out 400 at Martinsville Speedway in dominating fashion, is never one to shy away from giving his honest opinion about something. This week, the Joe Gibbs Racing driver and 23XI Racing co-owner weighed in on transgressions made by Austin Cindric on the race track in the latest episode of his Actions Detrimental with Denny Hamlin Podcast.
Cindric, who was penalized by NASCAR for right-rear hooking Ty Dillon‘s No. 10 Kaulig Racing Chevrolet at Circuit of the Americas, was involved in an on-track incident this past weekend at Martinsville with Riley Herbst, who drives for Hamlin’s 23XI Racing team.
While Hamlin was high on Cindric’s race craft at Superspeedways back in February after the Daytona 500, he’s not a fan of the moves the Team Penske driver has been making on track since then.
“As a car owner, I’m not liking [Austin Cindric] spinning out Riley Herbst, and it’s starting to get on my nerves a little bit that Austin Cindric seems to be losing his mind a little bit more than usual, and I can only say that because I did give him a lot of credit earlier in the year on his superspeedway driving and being smart inside the race car, but he’s starting to be a repeat offender,” Hamlin explained.
Hamlin is relatively sure that NASCAR will see Cindric’s incident with Herbst as a racing incident, which will likely not come with a penalty, but in Hamlin’s opinion, Herbst being crashed was a deliberate incident at the hands of Cindric.
“In my opinion, when things aren’t going his way, he’s wrecking guys, and so, I don’t know how NASCAR will look at this. It’s different because it’s not a right-rear hook, it was essentially kind of, not even a left-rear hook but just kind of a shove into the corner. NASCAR will probably view it as a racing incident, but anybody with any driving experience would say that he got pissed he got squeezed and he wrecked the No. 35,” Hamlin said.
While Hamlin admits Cindric was pinched into the wall in a three-wide battle with Herbst and AJ Allmendinger, the driver says that should be expected at Martinsville Speedway, where three-wide racing isn’t the recipe for success.
Hamlin understands the frustrating moment that led to the action by Cindric but feels the action that he took after being pinched in the wall continues a disturbing trend that he’s seen from the driver three times over the last couple of seasons.
“…this is just a Cindric’s getting a couple of close ones here where NASCAR needs to start taking habitual behavior into account, it’s happened with Austin Dillon at Gateway a year or so ago, you had the Ty Dillon thing this year, and now this so it’s not looking good and Cindric needs to clean that up.”
Hamlin says while he experienced clean racing for the majority of the day at the front of the field in the Cook Out 400, when he watched the race back he was shocked to see how disrespectful some of the racing was back in the pack.
“When I went back and watched the race it was crazy to see – I was up front all race so my car was obviously a lot clearing but the cars were beat to shit back there, it’s just crazy how much they are running into each other,” Hamlin said. “I get it everybody is grinding because the leader is going to be on you in 40 laps so everyone is trying to get all you can, but yikes it’s rough back there.”
For those wanting to listen to the latest episode of Actions Detrimental in full form, click play on the audio player below:
