Denny Hamlin Mar 12, 2023; Avondale, Arizona, USA; NASCAR Cup Series driver Denny Hamlin (11) before the United Rentals Work United 500 at Phoenix Raceway. Mandatory Credit: Gary A. Vasquez-USA TODAY Sports

Denny Hamlin uses his podcast to call out drivers who make dumb decisions that result in crashes. This week, he made sure to call himself out for doing just that.

Hamlin had a very rough time at his home race in Richmond, Virginia. The Joe Gibbs Racing driver got a speeding penalty early in the race and then followed that up by wrecking J.J. Yeley.

Yeley drives for Rick Ware Racing, one of the more underfunded teams in NASCAR. They’re working on a tighter budget than most Cup teams and are just trying to make laps and stay out of trouble. Unfortunately, Hamlin spun Yeley into the outside wall and if you only saw the crash, it sure looked intentional. Yeley even called out Hamlin for being hypocritical, given Hamlin’s comments over the past few weeks.

Hamlin took to his Actions Detrimental podcast to apologize and take responsibility for wrecking Yeley.

“It’s very very obvious, people, that I had no intention to wreck J.J. Yeley. Why would I wreck J.J. Yeley for 30th place? I was dead last, in the back of the pack, trying to make my way through. A caution didn’t help us. I don’t think we pitted because we didn’t have tires anyway, so it’s not like I needed a caution. But I got pinched off, so I got to the outside of J.J. off of Turn 4. You can see that a little bit on the in-car camera, and I had somebody, I think the #38 or #21, somebody on the outside of me. And [Yeley] pinched me up into them. And so I checked up real quick and I was like, ‘**** it, J.J.’ And so, what I was trying to do was trying to get right behind him and then go in the corner and show my left front and kind of just get him wedged off of the bottom, so I can just take the bottom on him because I couldn’t complete the pass on the outside.

“But really, I went back and I couldn’t realize because it happened so quick like, ‘What the **** happened? How did I misjudge this that badly?’ And I looked at the data, and I saw that J.J. checked up about 100 feet early and got on the brake quite a bit sooner. But it’s still my responsibility, don’t get it twisted, I’m not blaming J.J. for any of this whatsoever. He’s just out there trying to get a good finish for his team, and they’ve been making that #15 car quite a bit better. So I definitely am not one of those guys that tries to hurt one of the lower teams. I do my best to help lower teams all the time. But I just made a mistake, and I tried to drive in there, right there on this bumper and then start to cut low, but I never even got to the cut low part because when I drove in there and I was up his *** anyway, soon as he checked up, I just ran right in the back of him. And I mean, I slammed on the brakes as hard as I could, but it’s just one of those deals that I ****** up. It certainly wasn’t deliberate.

“I hate it for J.J., we were teammates together at JGR early in my career. He’s a great dude and I like everyone on that Rick Ware team so we’re pitted right next to him and I knew J.J. was going to be super ****** because, when you’re in his position, you’re just trying to make laps, make a program better, get a good finish that day. And all of a sudden, you just get jacked from behind, he never even had a chance to catch the car because I went into him with such a rate of speed but yeah I looked and I didn’t drive any differently than I had every other lap, but I just I was too close to him. And when he hit the brakes, and I was still in the gas, it was game over for him. So apologize to them, I’ll reach out to J.J. and figure out and/or the team and figure out if I can do anything to help them recover from this. So that’s my bad.”

Yeley finished 36th out of 37 cars, 17 laps down. For Hamlin, he felt he had the opportunity for a win, but a second speeding penalty, in addition to slow pit stops plagued Hamlin as he finished 20th. Kyle Larson got the win.

[Actions Detrimental with Denny Hamlin]

About Phillip Bupp

Producer/editor of the Awful Announcing Podcast and Short and to the Point. News editor for The Comeback and Awful Announcing. Highlight consultant for Major League Soccer as well as a freelance writer for hire. Opinions are my own but feel free to agree with them.

Follow me on Twitter and Instagram @phillipbupp