Dale Earnhardt Jr. has affirmed Kyle Petty's scathing criticism about Denny Hamlin's playoff opener strategy. Junior outlined that Petty has been in the sport for long enough to opine how things get done in NASCAR.The Quaker State 400 marked the first playoff battle on the 10-race calendar and witnessed Team Penske's Joey Logano etch his second Cup Series win in 2024.For Joe Gibbs Racing, however, the race weekend ended on a disappointing note. Martin Truex Jr. and Denny Hamlin started last due to post-qualifying plug wire change and finished 35th and 24th, respectively, and Ty Gibbs came 17th. Only Christopher Bell produced a satisfactory result on the 1.54-mile oval and posted a fourth-place finish.After the 266-lap battle, Hamlin weighed in on his defensive strategy for racing at Atlanta Motor Speedway. The same, however, received backlash from former NASCAR driver, Kyle Petty.Moving forward, Dale Earnhardt Jr. nodded to Petty's take on the #11 Toyota approach. During the Dirty Mo Media podcast, the two-time Xfinity Series champion explained why Petty's interpretation was "right." He said."Kyle Petty ripped him up, he's been critical of Denny in the past, but he's right. I feel like I've got enough experience and have made enough mistakes to be able to comment on this much like probably Kyle Petty as well. Kyle Petty's been around the sport for frickin ever, and he's seen a lot of sh**," Junior said.He highlighted that Denny Hamlin's strategy was hard to implement because of the characteristics of Atlanta. The track has a width of 40 feet and 28 degrees banking."You don't have to be the one actually climbing the mountain. If you watch enough people go up, you can figure out kind of how it gets done. It's harder for that strategy to work at Atlanta because the track width at a place like Daytona and Talladega, where you would use that same style maybe. You got more room, it was the log jam."Earnhardt Jr. recalled a similar incident when he thought the race would turn in his favor, but ended up "feeling like a fool.""I sat in the back of a 25-car pack at Talladega thinking surely they're gonna crash, and they didn't. And I rode across the finish line feeling like a fool," he added.Despite the poor result, Denny Hamlin is above the playoff bubble in 11th.Denny Hamlin reacts to Kyle Petty's scrutiny about his Atlanta strategySince the 2024 season began, Denny Hamlin has struggled on superspeedways and Atlanta Motor Speedway, which produces similar racing to Daytona and Talladega.In the season-opener Daytona 500, the 54x Cup Series race winner started eighth but finished 19th. The following race at Atlanta saw a similar result as the JGR driver wrapped his run in 23rd place. At Talladega, Hamlin succumbed to DNF after getting collected in an accident on Lap 156. The #11 Toyota driver crashed out at the recent Daytona race after getting wrecked by Corey LaJoie.Thus, Denny Hamlin's superspeedway racing has suffered multiple blows and he didn't want the same to happen in the playoffs. He replied to Petty's criticism, explaining the rationale behind his strategy and said (via Dirty Mo Media on X)."Certainly not saying that this was the right strategy, but it was the one that I wanted to employ on the day. I don't know the last time I scored 20 points on a superspeedway race, it's been so long. I'm trying to make it to the next round, I'm trying to get to some of these tracks where team, driver, all those things make a bigger difference. It's not a Russian roulette of whether you get caught up in a wreck or not," Hamlin said (0:14).Martin Truex Jr. is the only JGR driver below the playoff cutline in 15th place.