The action was back at Bristol Motor Speedway with a war of attrition on the track and a war of words in the garage following Kasey Kahne’s victory in Sunday’s Food City 500.
Denny Hamlin, who led a race-high 117 laps, and his former Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Joey Logano, went at it verbally in a scuffle that also involved team members. The dust-up came after an incident on Lap 348 in which Hamlin sent Logano spinning in Turn 2 with both drivers in hot pursuit of race leader Jeff Gordon.
Ultimately, though they both led the race, neither factored at the finish.
Logano, who ended up 17th, made a beeline for Hamlin’s crippled Toyota immediately after the race, sticking his head in the driver’s window.
“That’s a freaking genius behind the wheel of the 11 car –probably the worst teammate I ever had,” Logano said. “He decided to run in the back of me, so, whatever. I have a scorecard and I’m not putting up with that. What goes around comes around.”
Hamlin, relegated to 23rd by a late-race flat tire, had his own take.
“He slipped up, into me,” Hamlin said. “He would have been in the garage with no radiator if I had not checked up twice. I meant to run into him (although) I didn’t mean to spin him out. … We finished bad. He finished bad. It’s even.”
Hamlin and Logano had also exchanged less-than-complimentary Tweets after the Daytona 500. Asked if the two had a problem, Logano replied: “If we didn’t, we do now. Tweet that.”
Of course, it was the close racing on the .533-mile track that fueled tempers. With drivers able to run both the bottom and top lanes –something they’d been unable to accomplish in recent years at Bristol –there were 17 lead changes among 10 drivers.
“Anytime you come to a short track you want to see a great race,” said Brad Keselowski, who finished third. “No, the ‘old Bristol’ can never come back. It will never be (like) 1995-99. It’s a whole different era with a different car. But I quite honestly feel this (Bristol) is better. It’s a very racy track. It changes a lot throughout the race. Certainly, you have the ability to run into each other like you always had. But you also have the ability to really work a lot of different lanes. That makes the lap traffic and all that stuff really, really fun to go through and really fun to watch.”
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