Dale Earnhardt Jr.: Denny Hamlin’s approach to Atlanta race was ‘out of character’

Among the many NASCAR fans watching at home, Dale Earnhardt Jr. was confused by Denny Hamlin and his performance in Atlanta. Hamlin more or less rode around for 400 miles until he was wrecked on the final lap in overtime.

In the past, Denny Hamlin has deployed this strategy. He will hang in the back of a superspeedway race, and move up as he feels comfortable. Apparently, Hamlin never got comfortable.

In the middle of the race, Hamlin drove himself up to almost 20th place. Then he backed off, feeling a wreck was imminent.

Dale Jr. talked about it on his podcast this week.

“Well, again, this will all be a nothing burger if he advances,” Earnhardt explained on the Dale Jr. Download. “But that was not, that was not , that was out o f character for Denny. A guy that’s like… it was just out of character I don’t know how else to say it.”

The Hall of Famer gave a little insight into Denny Hamlin’s strategy. He also broke down why it wasn’t working as well at Atlanta.

“It’s harder for that strategy to work at Atlanta because the track width,” Earnhardt continued. “At a place like Daytona, Talladega, where you would use that same style maybe, you’ve got more room to kind of make your way forward and it was the logjam that made it, you know, he’s sitting there going ‘I’ve tried this strategy before, it is what it is, I had a bad qualifying, I’m not going to be in a hurry. Hopefully, there’s a lot of attrition.’ There wasn’t. That didn’t work in his favor.”

When it was all said and done, Denny Hamlin’s plan did not work out. There was not “big one” that took out multiple leaders. The closest thing we got was seeing Kyle Larson and Chase Briscoe wrecking at the end of Stage 1.

The race didn’t pan out how Hamlin thought it would.

“So, look, they didn’t have the attrition and the crashes that Denny was anticipating, of course, the one they have he’s in it off turn four. When he’s sitting back there with 40 to go and you’re watching the race and how the race has been going and how I guess, when you’re watching the pack and how the pack has been behaving, you’re thinking, ‘I don’t know how in the hell he thinks he’s going to drive up through this.’

“He never went on the attack. It was like he wasn’t going to make that move until the big crash happened, right? He was going to hope that the crash took a lot of people out of this race and making that 20 points more attainable. So, I don’t know man, I was a little surprised by it, I think he will probably still advance. If he doesn’t, then this is a bigger story.”

Dale Earnhardt Jr. hit it on the head. Denny Hamlin was not himself, he was acting out of character. Will we see this bite him in the butt? Does it put him at risk of not making the Round of 12, let alone the Championship 4?

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