Brad Keselowski Deflects Blame for Controversial Crash
What’s Happening? RFK Racing owner and driver Brad Keselowski is defending himself online after a late race incident involving himself, Denny…
Denny Hamlin may have endured one of his toughest races of the season at Sonoma Raceway, but the veteran driver stopped well short of placing the blame solely on Carson Hocevar for the incident that derailed his afternoon.
Although Denny Hamlin emerged from this past weekend’s race at Sonoma with the NASCAR Cup Series points lead by edging out his own driver, Tyler Reddick of 23XI Racing, by a single point, his race itself was anything but straightforward.
The afternoon hit its low point on a Lap 64 restart when Hamlin’s No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota spun after contact from Carson Hocevar.
The contact came only after Hocevar himself had been nudged from behind by Brad Keselowski, and Alex Bowman before that, creating a chain reaction that sent Hamlin around and left his car with damage. Despite the setback, Hamlin salvaged a 26th-place finish, limiting the damage to his championship hopes.
What’s Happening? RFK Racing owner and driver Brad Keselowski is defending himself online after a late race incident involving himself, Denny…
Discussing the incident on the latest episode of his podcast Actions Detrimental, Hamlin clarified that he did not see Hocevar as the lone culprit. While he acknowledged that Hocevar could have handled the situation better, he rejected the idea that the Spire Motorsports driver entered the corner with reckless intent.
He took the blame from Hocevar’s shoulders, saying:
“I think that it’s always very easy to blame the car directly behind you, and yes, Carson could have done a better job. But I don’t think that he came into the corner with reckless abandonment. . . Usually, you can tell intent through data, right? You can’t say, ‘I didn’t mean to hook him’ when your steering wheel turns towards them, right? It usually doesn’t lie, but it’s just too messy; all of them had somewhat of a role in that.” — Denny Hamlin
According to the JGR driver, the data did not point to one clear offender because multiple cars were making contact with one another, creating a domino effect that eventually reached him.
He estimated the responsibility was shared almost equally among Hocevar, Brad Keselowski, and Alex Bowman, adding that each shared a one-third split of the blame, or in his mind, three shares of 33%.
“I think it’s like 33, 33, 33 of the 77, the 6, and the 48,” Hamlin said. They were all hitting each other, nobody wanted to get off the bumper of the guy in front of you. And the guy way up there is the one that got spun.”
From his point of view, he had several car lengths over the group behind him entering the corner, making it surprising that they still managed to reach and spin him. That, he believes, only establishes the idea that the cars behind were repeatedly bumping into one another and effectively “ping-ponging” through the field until the chain reaction caught him.
The driver telemetry and in-car data often reveal whether an incident is deliberate, and after reviewing the available information, Hamlin did not see evidence suggesting Hocevar intentionally caused the wreck.
He saw it as just a messy racing incident in which several drivers contributed, with him ultimately suffering the biggest consequences.
Instead of shouldering criticism at Hocevar, he chose to chalk it up to overly aggressive driving throughout the pack, admitting he wished the drivers behind had exercised more care but acknowledging that similar chain-reaction spins affected several competitors during the race.
For Hamlin, it was simply a case of taking the hit, recovering as best he could, and moving on.
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