“It’s one of those racing things” – Denny Hamlin on Kyle Larson being wrecked by Daniel Suarez at Iowa.

Denny Hamlin recently gave his thoughts on the Kyle Larson-Daniel Suarez incident in Iowa.

In stage three, Suarez collided with Larson during a restart, causing Hamlin to crash as well.

This incident impacted both Hamlin and Larson’s races, but especially the Hendrick Motorsports driver, given his speed during the race.

Denny Hamlin discussed the incident on the Actions Detrimental podcast, explaining what happened between the #5 and #99 drivers.

“It appeared that Suarez had moved up too high. He got into the left rear of the #5, where he was three wide bottom. So it is normally your obligation to keep your car lower at that time, which he did not do and instead went into the #5 and started it. So it’s one of those racing things that happens, especially on restarts at short tracks like today, where we were three or four wide several times,” Hamlin explained. (23:35)

Denny Hamlin mentioned that during restarts, the track gets cleaned up and has no rubber on it. He added that everyone is feeling their cars out and that the car doesn’t have “much grip” for the first few laps after the restart.This leads to opportunities for drivers to “pounce and pass” in that time, something Larson also tried, but Suarez “misjudged” and got the #5.

Denny Hamlin claims Kyle Larson should’ve been more patient after the restart in stage 3

After Denny Hamlin described what happened between Kyle Larson and Daniel Suarez in that final stage incident, he was asked an interesting question. He was asked if Larson could have avoided the wreck.

Hamlin claimed that question was “probably the only thing” that Kyle Larson must’ve been second guessing considering his post-race comments. Having said that, Hamlin justified Larson taking the opportunity to make that move.

“He’s trying to get back to the front as quick as possible. But certainly you feel like with as fast as his car was, and he was that day, did he have to go get that two cars right in that corner? Probably not. But that’s hindsight. 90% of the time it works. You go on. You’re unscathed and you just gained multiple spots on a restart. But it’s hard to second guess. If you see a gap and an opening, you take it because usually you don’t think about, ‘Well, this person is likely to misjudge this corner and run into me,'” Hamlin explained. [24:30]

The #11 driver claimed one has to always take into account the other drivers around them before making such a move and putting their car “in a vulnerable spot.”Denny Hamlin added that this situation was one of those things where the #5 team was left “banging their head against the hauler door” because they had a fast car and got a bad finish out of it.