Denny Hamlin Calls on Austin Cindric to Clean Up His Driving

Jim Dedmon-Imagn Images

Denny Hamlin spent the entirety of Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series event at Martinsville Speedway running at the front of the pack, before eventually capturing the victory in the Cook Out 400.

So, when the Joe Gibbs Racing driver got the opportunity to watch the race back from outside of his No. 11 Progressive Toyota Camry XSE, there were some in-race events that caught his attention – and for the wrong reasons.

Less than 24 hours following a very messy NASCAR Xfinity Series event at the half-mile paperclip, which many people – including NASCAR Cup Series drivers and industry members – condemned, the back-half of the field were racing quite aggressively.

“When I went back and watched the race it was crazy to see, I was up front up race, so my car was obviously a lot cleaner, but the cars were beat to shit back there,” Hamlin said Monday on Actions Detrimental. “It’s just crazy how much they are running into each other. I get it, everybody is grinding because the leader is going to be on you in 40 laps, so everyone is trying to get all you can, but yikes it’s rough back there.”

For Hamlin, his biggest issue came as a result of an incident on Lap 202, where Austin Cindric was squeezed into the middle of a three-wide situation with AJ Allmendinger and Riley Herbst. As the three drivers entered the first corner, Herbst, driving the No. 35 Toyota Camry XSE for 23XI Racing – the team Hamlin co-owns – ended up spun around.

“As a car owner, I’m not liking [Austin Cindric] spinning out Riley Herbst, and it’s starting to get on my nerves a little bit that Austin Cindric seems to be losing his mind a little bit more than usual, and I can only say that because I did give him a lot of credit earlier in the year on his superspeedway driving and being smart inside the race car, but he’s starting to be a repeat offender.”

“When things aren’t going his way, he’s wrecking guys, and so I don’t know how NASCAR will look at this. It’s different because it’s not a right-rear hook, it was essentially kind of, not even a left-rear hook, but just kind of a shove into the corner.”

Even though Hamlin says that NASCAR will likely just view this run-in as a racing incident, the 44-year-old driver is adamant that it was not, saying “anybody with any driving experience would say that he got pissed he got squeezed and wrecked the No. 35.”

After attempting to give Cindric the benefit of the doubt by analyzing the situation, Hamlin points to past precedent, and called on the Team Penske driver to clean up his act and called on NASCAR to look at past patterns when making penalty decisions.

“Cindric’s getting a couple of close ones here where NASCAR needs to start taking habitual behavior into account, it’s happened with Austin Dillon at Gateway a year or so ago, you had the Ty Dillon thing this year, and now this, so it’s not looking good, and Cindric needs to clean that up.”

Cindric has already been the culprit of scrutiny from NASCAR earlier this season, after it was ruled that he intentionally wrecked Ty Dillon in the opening laps at Circuit of The Americas (COTA), which saw him get docked a crucial 50 points.