With all of the drama and talk this past week, let’s go back to Richmond 2016, where Denny Hamlin picked up the win over Kyle Larson. Richmond is Hamlin’s home track and he’s always performed well there. When it was the final race before the Chase for the NASCAR Cup, he was especially good.
This was Kyle Larson’s first season in the NASCAR postseason. After picking up a late-season win at Michigan, he took the No. 42 Chip Ganassi Racing Chevy to the Chase. However, the last race of the regular season would go to Denny Hamlin.
Over the years it has become more common for Hamlin to finish in the top-5 than not. When he’s on at this track, he’s really on. This overtime win would give Hamlin his third win of the season.
Kyle Larson was really coming into his own during this season. He won at Michigan just a couple of weeks before this Richmond race. He qualified P2 behind Hamlin who won the pole in this race, and that’s how they’d finish. Then, he went on to finish 9th overall in the standings. He would then go on to win four races in the 2017 season as he became a regular in the top-10.
Denny Hamlin made it to the Round of 8 this season and would finish 6th overall at the end of the year. Jimmie Johnson earned his seventh and final championship as he won at Homestead-Miami Speedway over Joey Logano, Kyle Busch, and Carl Edwards.
Denny Hamlin and Kyle Larson frenemy rivalry
Fast forward seven years, and Denny Hamlin and Kyle Larson will likely be two of the favorites in this week’s Cook Out 400. After their encounter on the track in Pocono that caused so much controversy over the following days, the two might have unsettled business.
Larson admitted he is going to have to race Hamlin differently in end-of-race situations. That is going to have fans on their toes whenever the two get close to one another moving forward. While they are friends off the track, the two might be the newest frenemy rivalry in NASCAR.
There is a lot of frustration with Denny Hamlin. Some of that is what he did, a lot of it is who he is, and some of it has to do with not owning up to it. Hamlin has taken the deny, deny, and deny again approach. Even with video evidence and other drivers confirming the two made contact, he says he never touched Laron’s car.
Part of that might have to do with how NASCAR has treated Hamlin. When he “admitted” to running Ross Chastain into the wall on his podcast after Phoenix, NASCAR fined him and penalized him. That process later led to a change in the penalty appeals process. Richmond might be round two of this new feud.
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