Denny Hamlin: Cars flipping over ‘is not a concern’ for me

Denny Hamlin is no stranger to hard contact on the race course, but after witnessing Corey LaJoie‘s flip at Michigan this week he’s still of an opinion you might not expect.

Would he rather flip than hit a wall?

“Yes. It’s not a concern on my end. Yes (I’d rather flip over) than hit a wall,” Denny Hamlin said on his Actions Detrimental podcast. “I guess statistically speaking there’s always anomalies. There’s always instances where cars go airborne, and we had that incident at Talladega with Brad Keselowski, Ryan Newman. We’ve had cars get up in the catch fences and there’s been some collateral damage from that.

“But generally speaking I feel like from a driver safety perspective we haven’t had a whole lot of flips equal bad injuries. We’ve had contact with wall equal bad injuries.”

LaJoie’s wreck on Monday certainly put a lot of hearts in throats. It was a scary, scary moment, one that seemed to last forever until his car finally caught the infield grass and went right-side-up again.

Hamlin contends, though, that the feel of a crash like that isn’t as bad as some where you go into the wall.

“One just looks more violent than another,” Denny Hamlin said. “When you flip over and the thing starts tumbling, right, people are thinking, ‘Oh my gosh, look at all the hard hits he’s taking.’ It’s not really, it’s more just like a I would think a spin cycle, right? It’s not any really hard hit it’s just a bunch of real small ones. It’s just when you hit in these cars, especially flat-sided or nosing in, that’s that one big spike and that’s what really can cause injuries.”

Hamlin should know. While he hasn’t had a recent crash that looked like LaJoie’s, he has been involved in some pretty hard contact.

In fact, just two weeks ago at Richmond he was spun into the wall by Austin Dillon. That left him sore for days.

“It was bad. It was bad. Just my whole right side,” Hamlin said. “I felt like I got crushed into the right side of the seat, so everything on the right side of me, my leg, my back, my shoulder just was all just felt like it got hit hard. When you look on TV some impacts are not all equal. Some look bad that aren’t and some aren’t that actually are. So it’s just weird.”

Despite LaJoie’s flip, Hamlin continues to believe it’s not something the sport should actively try to take away. It’s just part of racing.

“I just think that cars flipping over has happened for forever and it’s going to continue to happen and slowing us down is not the answer,” Denny Hamlin said. “You’re just going to make us run closer together and cause more contact and cause more cars to flip. So I think it’s just a product of it. I didn’t really see anything wrong and it was a unique situation where he turned sideways at 185 miles per hour against probably a headwind that helped this thing flip over.”

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