Kyle Larson could only look at his scuffed-up race car while the boos rained down on winner Denny Hamlin in victory lane. Their battle for the win at Pocono Raceway produced the latest dust-up between two NASCAR Cup Series buddies that certainly don't act like it on the racetrack.
"He's still a friend," Larson said. "But races me like an assh--e."
The criticism came after Larson finished 21st, losing the lead late after Hamlin forced him high into the turn 1 wall on a restart. The contact closely resembled what Hamlin did to Ross Chastain at this racetrack a year ago, payback after Chastain spun his rival multiple times over several months.
Denny Hamlin ran Ross Chastain up toward the wall last year...
— NASCAR on NBC (@NASCARonNBC) July 23, 2023
He's done it now with Kyle Larson, so Larson got him back! #NASCAR pic.twitter.com/LPrSv24OhN
“What did you expect me to do?”
— NASCAR on NBC (@NASCARonNBC) July 19, 2023
After several run-ins last year between Denny Hamlin and Ross Chastain, this at Pocono… pic.twitter.com/KDtFANUUJ0
"Ross probably deserved it, right?" Larson added when reminded of the comparison. "With all the stuff he's done to Denny in his career. Again, I haven't done that to Denny. So, I don't think I deserve to be run into before I ever got to the wall."
If you're keeping score at home, it's Hamlin two, Larson zero after last-lap contact at Kansas in May also left Larson limping to the finish.
"One of the greatest finishes here at Kansas!"@KurtBusch, @ClintBowyer and @mikejoy500 break down Denny Hamlin's battle with Kyle Larson on the last lap. pic.twitter.com/dDA8dRUCJi
— FOX: NASCAR (@NASCARONFOX) May 7, 2023
"I could have two more wins, 10 more playoff points, if not for the 11," Larson said. "So yeah, I'm p---ed, and I should be."
Hamlin, meanwhile, held his ground, insisting there was no contact between them or with Larson's Hendrick Motorsports teammate Alex Bowman earlier in the race.
"I'm not here to defend anything," he said. "I put both those guys, the 48 and 5, in an aero situation. Didn't touch either one. How can you wreck someone you don't touch?"
Hamlin did reiterate his respect for Larson as an on-track competitor, claiming "you actually kind of race your buddies harder than you race others." But as the press conference unfolded, it became clear Hamlin felt aggression was a necessity toward Larson on a day dirty air made passing difficult.
"The rules of going for a win [have] changed in the last 10 years," he said. "Like, it's just different. People, just, like, well, it's what I had to do. That's what you hear, right? I didn't have to.
"But I had to race hard for a win. Was I going to let off and give him all this extra room? Absolutely not. No way. I wanted to race side by side because I earned the spot of getting beside him."
Let's translate. Remember that Chastain wreck from above? Hamlin won the battle that day but Chastain, known for his take-no-prisoners style, almost won the war in 2022, knocking out Hamlin at Martinsville Speedway in October with a Mario Kart-style move before finishing one spot short of a championship. Denny appears to have learned a lesson from that, feeling the reward for roughing someone up to earn a trophy outweighs any potential consequences that come with it.
Hamlin may need to buy some new earplugs, though. The boos that rained down on him as the No. 11 car reached victory lane were the loudest for any driver in recent memory, casting a shadow on the 50th Cup Series win in what's been an illustrious career for the 42-year-old.
"I'm just too old to care," Hamlin said of the noise. "Fandom doesn't give me trophies. Fandom doesn't do the job for me. In my career, just had some pivotal moments getting into guys when they were super popular, I just kind of wasn't."
So, where do we go from here? At some point, the friendship off the track becomes irrelevant when constant contact forms the basis of your on-track relationship.
"I still don't see any reason to go wreck race cars," said Kyle Larson's crew chief, Cliff Daniels. "But certainly, if [Kyle] thinks he needs to get some more respect commanded his way, that's something he needs to take care of."
Traffic Report
Green: Joe Gibbs Racing. Life is good at JGR. Their Toyotas have now won the last two Cup races and Hamlin is well positioned for a championship run. Martin Truex Jr. leads the point standings, Christopher Bell sits fourth and rookie Ty Gibbs earned the best finish of his Cup career (fifth) at Pocono Sunday.
Yellow: Chase Elliott. 10th was a nice comeback for the sport's Most Popular Driver after spinning out in Pocono qualifying. It's just not enough to close the gap in his failing playoff bid, sitting 56 points short of 16th-place Michael McDowell with five races left in the regular season.
Red: Ryan Blaney. Engine woes found Blaney while out front, sliding him back to 30th on seven cylinders. It's the fourth finish of 30th or worse in the last six races for a driver who started the summer red hot.
Speeding Ticket: Pocono's Tow Truck. Another Team Penske driver, Joey Logano, had his potential winning car turned into the turn one wall on a restart. But any hope of fixing it went out the window when the tow truck driver dragged his car on the asphalt for two miles, literally ripping the front of it into pieces. The level of expletives from the reigning Cup champion (warning: NSFW language) before and after the tow is something we've never seen before in his Cup career.
"They see a race car once a year," Logano said of the two truck drivers after calming down. "That's not fair to the people working out there on the racetrack that they don't have a lot of experience … they don't know that you can't push a car with four flat tires on it … we wasted a lap-and-a-half before they tried to hook it. There's a better way to do it."
Oops!
Sounds like Tyler Reddick should have his 23XI Racing co-owner, Michael Jordan -- who was once the world's most famous minor league baseball player, teach Austin Dillon a thing or two about making a throw. After contact between them sent his No. 3 Chevrolet hard into the outside wall, Dillon's helmet toss in retaliation fell short, landing awkwardly on the asphalt away from the No. 45 and leaving him even more frustrated.
Austin Dillon 🥄
— Dyl (@Chill_Dyl123) July 23, 2023
Rate the helmet throw 1 - 10#NASCAR pic.twitter.com/30Xird24iu
"He had quite a wind-up," joked Reddick, who wound up second in the race. "I kind of knew it was coming."
It seemed like a racing incident, two drivers fighting over the same space but Dillon vehemently disagreed.
"I felt like I was holding my own," Dillon claimed. "He was at my left-rear going in there, and I knew we were three-wide."