Denny Hamlin doesn’t blame Tyler Reddick for crash that ended Bubba Wallace’s day at Dover

Denny Hamlin isn’t holding the wreck that ended Bubba Wallace’s afternoon at Dover against his fellow 23XI Racing wheelman Tyler Reddick.

Reddick pushed the issue in a turn, looking for track position, but it ended up wrecking the No. 23 and sent him to the garage. As Hamlin explained on the latest episode of his Actions Detrimental podcast, it’s all a part of the sport.

“It’s different, because I just know how I would feel at JGR. Right? And that is that, I can’t complain, if one of my teammates makes a move three wide, and puts me three wide. Like, trying to win,” Hamlin stated. “You know, our job as teammates is to work together, and then on Sunday, we go race. Should Tyler say, ‘I’m not going to go three wide. I’m not going to take this run because Bubba, he’s in the next lane.’ I would say no, because I do it to my teammates. They do it to me. Because that’s our job. And that is to, you know, look out for ourselves, and look out for our teams, that we respectfully drive for.

“You know, Dover’s just a weird place, where it’s it’s tough to go three wide, especially through the first corner there. It’s always a little sketchy, for sure. But you know, is Tyler even aware, that that Bubba’s in the next lane up, and you know, you stuck him three wide, outside? I don’t know. I think it’s a 50/50 shot that he actually knew that. He’s just trying to shut the No. 71 out of the way, who I think was multiple laps down. And you know, those cars are all on the lead lap. So like, you know, it would have been better if they were to just kind of got out of the way and let the lead lap cars get up there. But I think this was a weird sequence, because you had your wave around cars. This is when that weird caution came out in the middle of the sequences, where the No. 31 ended up, you know, benefiting from. It was just a weird sequence, where you had lap down cars in front of wave around, lead lap cars. And so all the lead lap cars are now trying to get themselves back in front of those lap down cars, to then battle for position with the other cars, so it’s just a weird position to be in.”

In the end, Hamlin won’t place the blame on the No. 45, and he believes it’s up to Wallace to turn his attention to Kansas next weekend, a track where Wallace has had some success in his career.

“I don’t fault Tyler. I hate it for Bubba, because he was grinding his way to a really, a pretty good day. He hung around. He was in the top 10 for most of the day, and it looked like to me, he kept getting better as the race went on,” Hamlin added. “So you know, it’s two tough weeks for him. Trust me, I know. I came off two tough weeks, two DNFs to win the next week. And I think that he’s probably going to Kansas knowing that he can, he can win there as well.

“So, you know, it’s just one of those things where it’s like, I know it’s so easy to just zoom in, and like just hate life right now. Just like, ‘Gosh, this sucks,’ you know, ‘Why me?’ But it’s, it’s just a small, it’s just a blip in the radar, right? It’s just something that you’ve got to just move past. You know, it’s one of many, many races, and we’re just going to move past it, and we’re gonna focus on, ‘Okay, Kansas, how can I win Kansas?’ We start that today. Here on Monday, we start to, ‘How can I win Kansas? How can I get better?'”

Perhaps Bubba Wallace will turn his DNF into a positive, using it as motivation for Kansas this weekend. Denny Hamlin and Tyler Reddick certainly wouldn’t mind a dominating day from the No. 23, after the trouble he’s gone through.