NASCAR driver Denny Hamlin, who races for Joe Gibbs Racing and co-owns 23XI Racing, has criticized NASCAR's rule book after the chaotic end to the race at Martinsville last weekend.
Following a contentious decision that affected Christopher Bell, Hamlin's fellow Joe Gibbs Racing teammate, Hamlin did not hold back in voicing his discontent and opening up on broader issues of rule interpretation and enforcement within the sport. The case involves Bell's "wall ride" which resulted in a significant penalty, which lost his position in the Championship 4.
Whilst speaking about the situation on the "Actions Detrimental" podcast, Hamlin commented:
"That's not true. I don't agree with that. A tire rolling across the track means a wheel is off, right?
"That is a definite thing. This was a tire wobbling in the wheel well, you know? I don't know. Again, they put such vague wording in their rules it's what allows these instances to come up, where they are always in these situations.
"Well how are they going to interpret their rule this week? There's not enough clean, defined rules in that rulebook because they just leave it open for themselves to do what they want or feel is right.
"And so that's the issue that we have, right? I just don't know of any other sport, and I've never read the rulebook of any other sport, but usually it's foot on line – out.
"Things like that. But there's also roughing the passer. That's very, very vague, right? What is that? Is it grabbing him around the ankle? Can you turn?
"There's lots of things like that in other sports, but it seems as though it happens more times than not on we just don't know how they're going to rule it because we've seen instances where one is a white call, one is a black call and they look the same. But I opened this in saying that in my opinion this is what we did not want to have happen on the last lap."
NASCAR's decision marked a rare occurrence in the playoff era: the absence of Joe Gibbs Racing in the final four. Hamlin remarked on this atypical scenario, noting Joe Gibbs' displeasure over not having a car in the Championship 4.
"I thought that was interesting, surely you've seen how upset Joe (Gibbs) was with it. This is the first time there's not going to be a JGR car in the final four since 2016, I believe. Or no, maybe it might be ever in the playoff era.
"So he's obviously disappointed and, again, if you just look at the scoring monitor it looks like C-Bell's in and then obviously he goes in there and the talks to them and I don't know what they say, but it definitely is interesting that you're not able to protest. Usually, you can kind of protest just about anything. But he said that they said it's over and that's the decision."
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