{"id":800632,"date":"2026-07-14T05:07:16","date_gmt":"2026-07-14T05:07:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/800632\/"},"modified":"2026-07-14T05:07:16","modified_gmt":"2026-07-14T05:07:16","slug":"denny-hamlin-understands-bubba-wallace-nascar-penalty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/800632\/","title":{"rendered":"Denny Hamlin understands Bubba Wallace NASCAR penalty"},"content":{"rendered":"

When it comes to the penalty issued by NASCAR against Bubba Wallace<\/a> on Sunday night at Atlanta Motor Speedway, team owner but rival competitor Denny Hamlin<\/a> is staying out of the process but understands why everything happened.<\/p>\n

Hamlin has two hats that he wears at this stage of his career — driver of the Joe Gibbs Racing<\/a> No. 11 and team co-owner of 23XI Racing<\/a> and they sometimes come in conflict. As a result, Hamlin says dealing with the immediate aftermath of the \u2018out of bounds\u2019 penalty was the responsibility of 23XI Performance Director Dave Rogers.<\/p>\n

Read Also:<\/p>\n

With that said, Hamlin said on Monday night\u2019s Actions Detrimental podcast<\/a> that he understood why Wallace was immediately issued the penalty that dropped him from second to 29th.<\/p>\n

\u201cI mean, when I watched it, I was thinking that that’s definitely going to be a penalty because I’ve been penalized for it before, so I know and understand the rule and that it’s not that you gain a position but you can’t put yourself into position to gain a position,\u201d Hamlin said. \u201cDoes that make any sense?\u201d<\/p>\n

NASCAR Rule Book Section 8.3.2 states:<\/p>\n

\u201cIf NASCAR determines that a vehicle goes beneath the double painted lines to improve its position it will be black-flagged. If NASCAR determines that a vehicle forces another vehicle beneath the double painted lines in an effort to advance its own position, the vehicle may be black-flagged.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hamlin is explaining that the word to is doing a lot of heavy lifting in the rule. It\u2019s not about the result but the intent.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s not literal in the sense of advancing your position,\u201d Hamlin said. \u201cIt’s making a move to advance. There’s a word in there that is very, very specific on the result doesn’t matter. It’s the intention. \u2026 You have to pretend that there’s a wall there.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat yellow line, that is a wall essentially, that is not concrete. \u2026 And the minute that you step your foot out of bounds, it doesn\u2019t matter whether you gained an advantage or not; that\u2019s what they call. So yeah, while the finishing position showed (at first) that he didn\u2019t advance, if you look out of the middle of Turns 3 and 4, Bubba was the furthest out in front.\u201d<\/p>\n

In other words, Wallace intended to advance his position and did ever so briefly. Ultimately, it cost him 27 points towards his seeding in the Chase for the Championship.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo he technically did gain, he gained the lead at some point of the move,\u201d Hamlin said. \u201cAnd that sucks because he lost a lot. He should have finished in the top three at least with the speed and everything. They came from the back again from the Ty Gibbs<\/a> thing. They were fast, man. And listen, they were aggressive.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hamlin doesn\u2019t even have a problem with his driver going for it in that fashion on the last lap.<\/p>\n

\u201cMan, going for a win, I think you have to go for it,\u201d Wallace said. \u201cBut I mean, I need to remind you that inside the car, we can\u2019t see the lines. When I\u2019m going down the backstretch at Atlanta, the difference between the apron and the actual race track, there isn\u2019t a lot of difference in the banking. \u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cBubba in his in-car, and he probably made it up in his mind, was that he was going three-wide somewhere. \u2018Wherever the biggest hole is, that is where I am going.\u2019 When you turn there, that\u2019s the moment you first see the line, but he can\u2019t see it when he\u2019s behind (Carson Hocevar<\/a> and Ryan Blaney<\/a>).<\/p>\n

\u201cSo you don’t know where you’re at on the track till you get there (and) it’s almost too little too late.\u201d<\/p>\n

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– The Motorsport.com Team<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When it comes to the penalty issued by NASCAR against Bubba Wallace on Sunday night at Atlanta Motor…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":800633,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[278223,159416,2331,49,48,3932,281898,634,3628,82],"class_list":["post-800632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nascar","tag-atlanta-ii","tag-atlanta-motor-speedway","tag-bubba-wallace","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-denny-hamlin","tag-denny-hamlin-understands-bubba-wallace-nascar-penalty","tag-nascar","tag-nascar-cup","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800632","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=800632"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800632\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/800633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=800632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=800632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=800632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}