{"id":39811,"date":"2025-08-01T17:03:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-01T17:03:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/39811\/"},"modified":"2025-08-01T17:03:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-01T17:03:09","slug":"denny-hamlin-gives-surprising-take-on-austin-hill-aric-almirola","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/39811\/","title":{"rendered":"Denny Hamlin gives surprising take on Austin Hill-Aric Almirola"},"content":{"rendered":"

NASCAR<\/a> brought the hammer down on Austin Hill<\/a> after he intentionally right-rear hooked\u00a0Aric Almirola<\/a> during this past weekend\u2019s Xfinity Series race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.\u00a0Many agreed that a one-race suspension was the right decision, but Denny Hamlin<\/a> is playing devil\u2019s advocate.<\/p>\n

The veteran Cup Series wheelman tried to make sense of Hill\u2019s choice to turn Almirola, believing he might\u2019ve simply been trying to save his own ride. Hamlin makes some salient points, but it\u2019s evident NASCAR didn\u2019t agree with his sentiment. <\/p>\n

\u201cI mean, it didn\u2019t look good,\u201d Hamlin stated, regarding Hill on the latest episode of his podcast<\/a>. \u201cBut golly, would he really be that egregious? The only thing I can think of \u2014 I\u2019m looking at it, and I try to give the benefit of the doubt. I think Austin Hill, because the fans generally don\u2019t like him, is not going to get the benefit of the doubt. You know, I\u2019ve seen some Martinsville races where it\u2019s like, I ain\u2019t giving that guy the benefit of the doubt either. Just, you know, bowling is way through. But I\u2019m thinking about being in his position and he gets turned sideways and you\u2019re trying to hold on to it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll say this, sometimes, and actually most times, when I\u2019m correcting that big of a motion, I\u2019m usually letting the wheel slide in my hands. It\u2019s hard to full go this way \u2014 you can\u2019t do it quick enough. It\u2019s best to just let the thing \u2014 let it go on one side, catch it with the other, and that\u2019s how you correct. Or that\u2019s how I\u2019ve done it a few times. The only thing I can think of that made his car go sharp left into the No. 19 is that the wheel was not done spinning in his hands, or when he grabbed it, when he\u2019s turning it, correcting it, he lets go, he catches it, it gets correct, but then he holds the wheel, and now the wheel\u2019s not, he\u2019s not holding the wheel in his normal 10-and-2. <\/p>\n

\u201cIf the car was going straight, he\u2019s now actually holding it in a different position. I know his hand\u2019s right here, but he\u2019s \u2014 you gotta understand what I\u2019m saying is that the wheel has clocked, because he let it spin on his hands. So, this is not straight up anymore. This could be \u2014 the front wheels are turned that way. I\u2019m just coming up with a theory. That\u2019s all. It looked like he right-rear hooked the No. 19. I\u2019m just saying, there\u2019s no way you can be that dumb.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026 It feels like, if there\u2019s anyone that would kind of fly off the rails because someone ran into him, it\u2019s probably him. But I just feel like there\u2019s an opportunity that he let the wheel spin in his hands to try to correct quickly, which he did an amazing job of. Then, when he grabbed onto the wheel, the wheel was no longer straight up. It was turned to the left. That\u2019s my theory.\u201d<\/p>\n

Moving forward, Hill will start Saturday\u2019s HyVee Perks 250 Xfinity Series race at Iowa Speedway. Per NASCAR\u2019s updated guidelines for playoff waivers, missing a race due to a suspension results in a loss of all playoff bonus points. Hill had 21 playoff points prior to the suspension, third most among drivers.<\/p>\n

Denny Hamlin thinks Austin Hill should\u2019ve been given the benefit of the doubt, but it\u2019s hard to see how he\u2019s earned it when you look at some of his past decisions on the track. Regardless, the Xfinity wheelman has put his team in a hole, and it\u2019ll be interesting to see if they can climb over when he returns to the car after Iowa.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NASCAR brought the hammer down on Austin Hill after he intentionally right-rear hooked\u00a0Aric Almirola during this past weekend\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":39812,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,634,82],"class_list":["post-39811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nascar","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nascar","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39811","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=39811"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39811\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39812"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}