{"id":244846,"date":"2025-10-28T04:11:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-28T04:11:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/244846\/"},"modified":"2025-10-28T04:11:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-28T04:11:07","slug":"denny-hamlin-reacts-to-martinsville-xfinity-race-gives-props-for-not-turning-it-into-a-st-show","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/244846\/","title":{"rendered":"Denny Hamlin reacts to Martinsville Xfinity race, gives props for not turning it into a ‘s**t show’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Denny Hamlin liked what he saw from the drivers at the NASCAR Xfinity Series race at Martinsville on Saturday. On the Actions Detrimental<\/a> podcast, Hamlin shared his reaction to Taylor Gray winning the race. <\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cVery timely win,\u201d Denny Hamlin said. \u201cVery strong there in the spring. Didn\u2019t get the win. Sammy [Smith] kind of got desperate there and made a move on him. It looked like an absolute replay on the last lap of kind of how far he was back, but I think Sammy thought better of it this time, and says, \u2018Yeah, I can\u2019t do that twice.\u2019 <\/p>\n

\u201cSammy was in a position where if he wins that race, he moves on. So good restraint by him on that and really kind of all-around job well done from the Xfinity Series not turning this into a s**t show like i usually is.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gray pulled away from Smith after an overtime restart to earn his first victory in the Xfinity Series. And as Hamlin mentioned, had Smith won on Saturday, he would have advanced to the NASCAR Xfinity Series Championship race at Phoenix this Saturday. Gray\u2019s win led to Carson Kvapil making it to the Championship 4, and he will join Jesse Love, Justin Allgaier, and rookie Connor Zilisch. <\/p>\n

More on the NASCAR Xfinity Series race at Martinsville <\/p>\n

After the race, Gray reacted to getting his first Xfinity Series victory. \u201c(Crew chief) Jason Ratcliff, all these guys \u2013 the pit crew did an awesome job tonight,\u201d Gray said, per NASCAR.com.<\/a> \u201cThey give me opportunities to win every time I walk through the gates to this race track.<\/p>\n

\u201cI knew I needed to get a good enough launch so that I wouldn\u2019t have anyone in reach of me heading into Turn 1. At that point, I knew we had a good enough car to drive away from the guys behind me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Smith shared his thoughts on just missing out on the championship race. \u201cI feel like we\u2019re good enough to be in the final four,\u201d Smith said. \u201cWe weren\u2019t good enough in the playoffs to do that. It really sucks, so we\u2019ll just regroup and keep digging.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Xfinity Series Championship race will start at 7:30 p.m. ET at Phoenix Raceway on The CW. This will also be he final race with Xfinity serving as the series entitlement sponsor. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Denny Hamlin liked what he saw from the drivers at the NASCAR Xfinity Series race at Martinsville on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":244847,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,3932,634,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-244846","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nascar","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-denny-hamlin","11":"tag-nascar","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244846","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=244846"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244846\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/244847"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=244846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=244846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=244846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}