Denny Hamlin and Joey Logano have not always been on the best of terms and things boiled over during the 2013 season. The two drivers had a long run of hostility between them that included contact at Bristol and California while trading barbs on social media.
During the Southern California race at the Auto Club Speedway, Logano made contact with Hamlin that resulted in Hamlin’s car slamming head first into the inside wall. The then-Joe Gibbs Racing driver suffered a compression fracture in a lumbar vertebra and was out for more than five weeks.
Denny Hamlin and Joey Logano’s Tough Times on the Track Continue
Before the crash in California, Hamlin and Logano almost got into a fistfight at Bristol after they bumped into each other on the track. After the next crash at the Auto Club Speedway, which put Hamlin out of commission for a long time, he claimed it was intentional on Logano’s part.
“How is it not intentional, is my thing,” Hamlin said. “It’s not like he got loose because I took air off him or anything like that. I saw him getting closer, I moved up the track. He kept getting closer, I moved up the track. He just was going to keep going until he ran into us.”
Although Hamlin never blamed Logano for his injury, he was sure that Logano had bumped him on purpose.
“Whatever happened after that, I’m sure he didn’t mean for me to wreck and get hurt. But he meant to run into us, there’s no doubt. He didn’t get loose with the back, he drove into us with the front. That’s a guy seeing I was going to get the better of him that week, and he wasn’t going to let it happen, and he hit the gas until he hit something. That’s my opinion of what happened, because I was there and I was in the incident.”
After the incident at the Auto Club Speedway, Hamlin said that Logano sent him a get-well-soon text but did not talk about the wreck.
“We really didn’t talk about wreck or anything of that nature. From him it was, ‘Hope you get back in the car soon,’ not … ‘Sorry we got together, I made a mistake.’ … It wasn’t that. It was just, ‘Hope you feel better.’
“My response is, ‘Why didn’t we just let things go? At Bristol you paid me back, you ruined my day. I finished 23rd, you finished 16th. Your day wasn’t ruined at Bristol by me. You came back, got back to the front, and then got in an incident with someone else, and that’s what ruined your day, but you’re still mad and got in my face.’”
On the same day, Logano also angered Tony Stewart, which resulted in a shoving fest on pit road.
However, NASCAR did not penalize Logano for the incident at Auto Club Speedway, crediting the crash to be a racing incident. Hamlin didn’t disagree and said Logano would ultimately be judged by his peers on the race track.
