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Denny Hamlin had a solid, race-winning car in the August 11 NASCAR Cup Series race at Richmond. Austin Dillon was surprisingly better. But instead of the Richard Childress Racing driver winning a race that he convincingly held a three-plus second lead over the second-place No. 11 car with less three laps remaining on the 0.75-mile track, a caution came out and changed everything.
On that green-white-checkered restart, Hamlin ran third going into the final turns and had a front-row seat, watching the No. 3 car drive into the rear of Joey Logano, which sent the two-time champion sliding up the track, and the momentum of the RCR driver’s aggressive move taking him with him. The seas appeared to part for the Joe Gibbs Racing driver.
Until they didn’t.
They closed quickly when Dillon got into the right rear of the No. 11 Toyota as it passed for the lead on the low side, sending it immediately to the right and up the track for a violent impact into the outside wall. Hamlin was uninjured and scored a second-place finish based on when the caution came out.
Despite not suffering a serious injury, Hamlin’s crew chief Chris Gabehart made a startling revelation about the severity of the impact endured by the No. 11 pilot during an August 15 appearance on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.
“Every time you have a significant enough incident that warrants a further look into the incident data recorder, NASCAR will send you the data for that incident,” Gabehart explained. “JGR’s had 21 of those instances in the Gen 7 (Next Gen) era.
“21 times we’ve gotten data from a crash from one of our four cars. Do you want to know what the highest recorded G spike in the history of Gen 7 was for JGR?” he questioned. “It was Richmond in the 11 car. 32 Gs.”
“This past Sunday night?” show co-host Larry McReynolds asked.
“Sunday night, 32-G spike in the wall off of turn four, coming to the checkered flag. Highest ever recorded,” the veteran crew chief said. “I might add, higher than the one that unfortunately put Kurt Busch in retirement, ultimately, at Pocono. Higher than that.”
Denny Hamlin Connected to Violent Crashes and Right-Rear Hooks
It was just over two years ago that Kurt Busch drove his No. 45 around the 2.5-mile track during qualifying, got loose, and violently smashed into the outside wall, first the right rear followed by the right front. He suffered a concussion and never raced for Hamlin’s 23XI Racing team again. He retired.
Last year Hamlin was involved in another ugly accident at Charlotte and unfortunately for him, another right-rear hook, this time the victim of Chase Elliott’s decision-making. The Hendrick Motorsports driver didn’t like how the JGR driver had given him minimal room on the outside coming out of turn 4 in the rain-shortened race and made a sharp left turn into the No. 11’s right rear, which sent the Toyota hard into the outside wall.
Elliott received a one-race suspension for the move.
A year before that, Hamlin’s driver, Bubba Wallace also received a one-race vacation for right-rear hooking Elliott’s HMS teammate Kyle Larson in Las Vegas, in another retaliatory move.
Hamlin’s Health Speaks to Safety of Gen 7 Cars
While Denny Hamlin has personally been involved in multiple violent crashes, including the most recent at Richmond, he’s been able to walk away and talk about it. That’s not to say it’s been without pain. He admitted as much last year on his podcast, including a nagging foot injury resulting from that crash at the Coke 600.
So there’s no denying that drivers aren’t still getting injured, which is natural in a sport where cars near 200 miles per hour, but they’re not getting seriously injured, like we saw with Busch and Alex Bowman suffering concussions in 2022.
While the Gen 7 initially received harsh criticism for those violent rear impacts and their effects and deservedly so, the governing body has listened to the drivers and made adjustments. Drivers aren’t suffering serious injuries and that’s a credit to its design, and more specifically, the adjustments made since it was introduced in 2022.
And the data, as alarming as it might be, backs it up.
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