JJ Yeley certainly didn’t appreciate Denny Hamlin ending his day early in Richmond when the #11 seemingly outright and for no good reason wrecked him from behind. The Rick Ware Racing driver was naturally pretty frustrated as he called out his former Joe Gibbs Racing teammate.

“From a guy who’s been preaching respect for the last couple weeks seemed really silly on Lap 32, knowing it was going to be a short run. And Obviously, he had no worries or issues,” said Yeley.

But if Hamlin is to be believed, what happened was neither something he intended to do, nor did he have any other motives like bringing a caution to capitalize on.

Denny Hamlin fights his case after accusations of him intentionally wrecking JJ Yeley

In a recent episode of the Actions Detrimental podcast, Hamlin wondered why everyone wasn’t seeing the obvious aspect of his incident with JJ Yeley. He said, “Why would I wreck JJ Yeley for 30th place? I was dead last in the back of the pack trying to make my way through.”

Hamlin described that caution couldn’t have helped him anyway as they didn’t have tyres left. He explained how a mixup at Turn 4 involving him, Yeley and a couple other drivers led to what happened.

“I had somebody, I think the #38 or #21, somebody on the outside of me, and he pinched me up into them,” he recalled. “So I checked up real quick and I was like, ‘Damn it JJ!'”

The veteran claims things happened so quickly, as he tried to maneuver his way past Yeley, that he was left wondering, “What the f**k happened?’ How did I misjudge this that badly?” Hamlin added he looked at the data and it proved that Yeley braked quite early leaving him in no man’s land.

But despite that, Hamlin added that he is still responsible for what happened. “Don’t get it twisted. I’m not blaming JJ for any of this whatsoever. He’s just out there trying to get a good finish for his team,” he claimed.

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Hamlin offers help for JJ Yeley and his team

Hamlin emphasized he isn’t “one of those guys” who tries to hurt smaller teams. “I do my best to help the lower teams all the time,” he claimed as he admitted to the mistake he made with Yeley.

“It’s just one of those deals where I f**ked up. It certainly wasn’t deliberate. I hated it for JJ,” Hamlin added. “We were teammates together at JGR early in my career. He’s a great dude and I like everyone on that Rick Ware team.”

He empathized with Yeley’s frustrations with someone in his position as he made an offer to help out him and his team. “I apologize to JJ. I’ll reach out to him and/or the team to figure out if I can do anything to help them recover from this,” Hamlin added.

“That’s my bad.”

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