Denny Hamlin made an interesting remark after his victory in Gateway. He confirmed that he plans to retire after the 2027 season. Having signed a contract extension already, the following two years are going to be crucial, especially since the veteran is pursuing a highly elusive Cup Series title. On the other hand, his teammate, Ty Gibbs, is the family team’s to-be successor. Caught between these two entities due to the New Hampshire scuffle, Joe Gibbs is in a fix.

Team Penske dominated most of the storylines for the Mobil 1 301 race. However, people could hardly ignore JGR’s in-house drama spilling out onto the racetrack. The ruckus that this caused elicited some very diplomatic remarks from Joe Gibbs – and Denny Hamlin is not satisfied with them.

Denny Hamlin calls for more action

On lap 110 of the New Hampshire race, fans reminisced about another racing moment three years ago. During the 2022 Xfinity Series playoff race in Martinsville, Ty Gibbs got in teammate Brandon Smith’s way. Similarly, Gibbs blocked Denny Hamlin and Christopher Bell. This irked Hamlin to the point of spinning out Gibbs after a few warning bumps. In response, Joe Gibbs asked them to settle the problem amongst themselves. Yet considering Ty’s history and egregious defiance of his teammates’ needs, Hamlin demanded a more proactive response from the leadership.

Denny Hamlin said in his ‘Actions Detrimental’ podcast, “The challenge is that I think me and Ty are going to have different opinions. Therefore, you need leadership to step in and say, ‘Well, this is how we want it done.’ And then we will play by those rules. Whatever those rules are, I will play by those rules. But I have been told in the past, if you’re not in it, you do everything you can to help your teammates that are in.”

The help of Joe Gibbs and other senior leaders is paramount to set an example, as Denny Hamlin continued. He said, “What do you want us to do? If you want us all to just race each other cut-throat, no matter what your position is in the stature of the standings, we can definitely do that…Then we’ve established this ‘no rules — you guys just do whatever you wanna do,’ none of us are going to win…It will continue to happen, more and more, like it or not…We might as well just hang this thing up.” 

Then, Denny Hamlin painted a clearer picture of the incident with Ty Gibbs. Given the various threads of opinions that have spun from this debate, Hamlin tried to clarify things: “Well, it was twofold because I was pretty much there into Turn 1, and then he moved down to the middle lane to cut the nose off to make me get really (tight). If you cut someone’s nose, especially if they’re running really close to you, it’ll make their car kind of lift up and take off. So I think he was just trying to cross my nose to make me lose air, just to further aero-block me. And I was so close to him that I’m like, ‘Hell no. You’re not gonna do that.’ So yeah, I tried to shove him up to the next lane to get my position, and I unfortunately spun him out.”

Denny Hamlin’s aggressive fallout also elicited raised eyebrows from the community. However, the JGR veteran pleaded his innocence.

Digging up another mishap from the past

In October 2017, in another tension-packed playoff race, Denny Hamlin had a similar scuffle. But unlike his New Hampshire fiasco with his JGR teammate, this happened with a Hendrick Motorsports rival. In the final laps of the race at Martinsville Speedway, Hamlin bumped the No. 24 Chevrolet, then driven by Chase Elliott, out of his way. This sent Elliott spinning up into the wall in the closing laps, and then Hamlin’s JGR teammate, Kyle Busch, grabbed the win. On the cooldown lap, Elliott replied in kind by sideswiping Hamlin’s car into the outside wall.

The two drivers got into a heated exchange afterwards, but Denny Hamlin said he had no foul intentions. “I regret the outcome because it was not intentional the way it turned out,” he said back then. 8 years later, Hamlin still sticks to his motives. And he even drew a parallel between that incident and his Ty Gibbs fiasco to justify the latter fallout.

Denny Hamlin said, “When he pulled down right in front of me, we were already together. Like, it took nothing. No, I wish I was that good. If that’s the case, I wouldn’t have wrecked Chase Elliott when I tried to move him up the racetrack back in 2017. It all depends on where you are on the racetrack, the loads of the car – there’s just lots of variables.”

Clearly, Denny Hamlin is holding his ground in the New Hampshire fallout. Let’s wait and see if JGR’s leadership intervenes in this matter or not, as the playoffs grow more tense.