Denny Hamlin reacts to Tyler Reddick’s controversial move on Chris Buescher

After he finished in 4th place, Denny Hamlin was asked about his thoughts on Tyler Reddick's controversial incident with Chris Buescher. Reddick, as he was battling for the lead with Buescher, slid up the racetrack and made contact with the #17 driver, because of which neither got the lead with Brad Keselowski capitalizing and eventually winning the race.

This was an incident that left Buescher furious and Reddick feeling guilty. But as for how Reddick's boss Denny Hamlin was feeling about his driver's mistake, there wasn't much he had to say for one simple reason. Talking to Frontstretch after the race, Hamlin said,

"Too far ahead, too far ahead for me."

When confronted with the fact that Reddick led 174 laps in the race but finished in 32nd place, Hamlin decided to focus more on the positives of Reddick's day.

"Certainly, they dominated the day. It looked like they really reaped the benefits. The pit crew did a great job of keeping them upfront all day long, and his car was obviously very fast as well," Hamlin said.

He then mentioned how he empathizes with Reddick, and how it is "always frustrating" to go from a position of lead to end up short of victory, considering he's been in such a situation twice this season.

But having said that, Hamlin added that he's more frustrated with the way the day went for the #11 team.

Denny Hamlin reflects on his 4th place finish at Darlington

The Joe Gibbs Racing driver, who has won thrice already this season, was asked by Frontstretch if finishing 4th at Darlington was a decent result for him even though it wasn't what he had expected. Hamlin claimed that if this was as bad as they could run, he'd take it.

He then pointed to something his crew chief said to further elaborate his point.

"Our crew chief said, 'you're not going to have the fastest car every single week'. And we're certainly didn't today. We didn't have a top 5 car. But we had one that we battled through. We didn't make any mistakes. The pit crew did a fabulous job, and we just knocked out a top 5 with some guys that were racing, having a tough day," Hamlin said [at 1:05].

Hamlin also mentioned how with the front end, the potential of the car was hurt on the short-end long run and deemed Darlington a "very lackluster day" for the #11 team.