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

Denny Hamlin recently shared his take on the Kyle Larson-Daniel Suarez incident from Iowa. In stage 3, Suarez tangled with Larson after a restart which ended up collecting Hamlin into the wreck as well.

This incident ended up affecting both Hamlin and Larson’s races, but especially so for the Hendrick Motorsports driver considering the speed he had shown during the race.

Speaking about the incident on the Actions Detrimental podcast, Denny Hamlin described what happened between the #5 and the #99 drivers.

“It looked like Suarez just moved up too high. He got into the left rear of the #5 and he was three wide bottom. So usually the responsibility is on you to hold your car lower at that point and he didn’t, and got into the #5 and started it. So it’s one of those racing things that happen, especially on the restarts at short tracks like this where we were three and four wide many times during those restarts,” Hamlin said. [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.