Following his run-in with teammate Ty Gibbs, Denny Hamlin is calling on Joe Gibbs Racing leadership to tell its drivers how to race based on championship eligibility on the latest episode of Actions Detrimental.
TENSIONS. ARE. HIGH. 👀
Denny Hamlin voices some frustration while battling with teammate Ty Gibbs. #NASCARPlayoffs
📺: @USANetwork pic.twitter.com/epxts7yuDJ— NASCAR on NBC (@NASCARonNBC) September 21, 2025
Sunday afternoon, Denny Hamlin sent teammate Ty Gibbs into the outside wall after several laps of hard racing. While most fans figured this could spiral into a war of words or even spill back onto the track this weekend, Hamlin is pointing to the upper brass at Joe Gibbs Racing to help sort the situation out.
During the latest episode of his podcast Actions Detrimental, Hamlin approached the tangle in a rather prudent manner. In his eyes, he and Gibbs, one in the playoffs and one out of the playoffs, respectively, were racing too hard during a time when the stakes were low for the No. 54.
While he agrees that you should always race to win, even against your teammates, Hamlin says that Gibbs racing him for position outside the top ten when he and his fellow JGR Playoff drivers are fighting for stage points is not the right time or place to race that hard.
“I agree that everyone should race to win the race. However, we’re not racing to win the race. We’re racing at the time for 11th place. Me, the 20 [Christopher Bell], the 19 [Chase Briscoe], we’re all battling, and scratching and clawing to try and get some stage points, which is going to be life or death for us. It’s our air that we need to move on.” — Denny Hamlin
Hamlin, who entered the playoffs leading the points, said that he felt “wronged” by Gibbs, racing him in this manner. “I felt. . . a little bit wronged in the sense of, my teammate [who is] out of the playoffs should not be the hardest car on the track to pass.”
While there were no team orders to do so in place on Sunday, Hamlin said that he thought it was precedent at JGR for non-playoff drivers to help their playoff teammates. Saying that Joe Gibbs himself has said “multiple times” in the past, “if you’re a non-playoff car, any break that you can cut your teammates, please do.”
Hamlin is taking a diplomatic approach to this issue, rather than airing it out online or on the track, asking Joe Gibbs Racing to establish what the team wants drivers to do when racing playoff teammates.
“What I want to happen is just leadership step in and tell us, ‘What do you want us to do?'” Hamlin said. “If you want us all to just race each other, cutthroat, no matter what your position is and stature in the standings, we can definitely do that. However, Hamlin notes that under the ‘cutthroat’ approach, “none of us are going to win.”
The 44-year-old, who is pursuing his first championship, closed out by saying that should JGR establish this plan, he will follow them.
“We will play by those rules, whatever those rules are, I will play by those rules. But I’ve been told in the past, if you’re not in it [the playoffs], you do everything you can to help your teammates that are in it.”
While Hamlin has taken his time breaking down the situation, following his 35th-place exit from the race Sunday, Gibbs was slightly less chatty, shutting down a line of questions from NBC’s Kim Coon, in a manner that prime Kyle Busch would likely be proud of.
Nonetheless, while Hamlin stated he wanted JGR to step in and draw up the rulebook, team owner Joe Gibbs expressed a different tone Sunday, telling the media that it was his drivers who had to “handle that.” With Gibbs going on to say “They’re the ones that got the wheel.”
While this seems to be slowly burning out, the eyes of NASCAR will likely be on the two teammates once again this weekend at Kansas Speedway. Hamlin, the track’s all-time wins leader, currently sits comfortably above the cutline for the Round of Eight, but, with the chaos of the Roval looming, the team would like to perform well come Sunday.
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