Denny Hamlin is growing concerned with the speed Bubba Wallace and Tyler Reddick are eliciting week-in and week-out on the track.
The 23XI Racing duo started the season off strong, but both the No. 23 and No. 45 have tailed off slightly, and that’s something that’s worrying Hamlin. While Reddick is locked into the playoffs with a win, Wallace is still searching for his first in 2024, and he’s currently on the outside looking in.
While Hamlin has his duties as a driver for Joe Gibbs Racing, he’s also the team owner of 23XI Racing, and the latter may need his attention more than ever at the moment.
“I mean, you try to, right? You just hope that they’re doing everything they can,” Hamlin said, regarding whether he’ll go to the No. 23 and the No. 45 as the team owner and try to help them find more speed, via the latest episode of his Actions Detrimental podcast. “Certainly, I’m not overjoyed with the performance and speed at 23XI right now.
“I think that you know, there’s definitely some JGR cars that were very, very strong in the dry, and just for whatever reason, could not, they’re not showing the speed that they were early in the season. So yeah, they’re working on it, trying to figure it out. But you know, they’ve got some good information that they can look at to get better.”
Moving forward, Tyler Reddick is pretty secure in his standing, but Bubba Wallace may need to find a win to get into the Top 16. Without one, he could end up missing the playoffs, and that would be a disastrous development for Denny Hamlin and 23XI Racing as a whole.
Denny Hamlin: Bubba Wallace has a ‘tough task’ to make NASCAR Playoffs
Meanwhile, Denny Hamlin believes that Bubba Wallace will have a challenging time reaching the NASCAR Cup Series playoffs after a tough finish at New Hampshire. On his Actions Detrimental podcast, the 43-year-old driver said Wallace will have to beat Joey Logano each week to have a shot at postseason driving.
“You always have to count on one more freak winner that’s outside the cut, in which case, then [Chris] Buescher becomes the next guy above the cut line,” Hamlin said. He’s substantially ahead of [Joey] Logano and Bubba. That’s where you have to look at it and say okay, we have to not get unlucky first and then we got to go beat Joey for the next seven/eight weeks.
“That’s not going to be easy. The way Logano’s been running, it’s not crazy and unthinkable, but you’re going to have to be consistently better than him over the next seven/eight weeks, and that will be a tough task.”
NASCAR released its latest playoff picture and has Wallace the first one out. With eight races remaining, the 30-year-old has a chance to qualify for the postseason if he earns a win. Wallace is due for a victory as he last won at the Kansas fall race in 2022. Wallace made the playoffs for the first time last year and finished 10th in the standings.
It looked like Wallace was going to take a big step forward last year after finishing fifth in the first two Cup Series races of the year. But due to some bad luck and wrecks, Wallace has to work even harder to give himself a chance to win a championship.
On3’s Brian Jones contributed to this article.
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