Rubbish! So NASCAR has decided to publicly fine/punish Denny Hamlin for having the audacity to offer an honest critique of the new Gen 6 car. So let me get this one straight. NASCAR in their ultimate wisdom want their drivers to have personality as long as the personality doesn’t offer the fans an honest take on the most important question on racing this season, the new car? Rubbish.
For those that may have missed it here is what Hamlin, said after the Phoenix race when asked his opinion on the new Gen 6 car.
“I don’t want to be a Denny Downer but the car did not race as good as our Generation 5 cars.”
“This is more like what the Generation 5 was at the beginning,” he said. “The teams hadn’t figured out how to get the aero balance right. Right now, you just run single-file and you cannot get around the guy in front of you. You would have placed me in 20th place with 30 (laps) to go, I would have stayed there — I wouldn’t have moved up. It’s just one of those things where track position is everything.”
Seems like a very reasonable from a driver take on how Hamlin felt about the new car. NASCAR who must have felt that their feelings and offered this to explain the $25,000 fine.
“While NASCAR gives its competitors ample leeway in voicing their opinions when it comes to a wide range of aspects about the sport,” NASCAR said in a statement accompanying the penalty release, “the sanctioning body will not tolerate publicly made comments by its drivers that denigrate the racing product.”
Last night Denny Hamlin tweeted that he would not pay the fine setting the tone for a showdown with NASCAR. A short while later Hamlin released this message.
“The short of the long of it is I believe I was severely disrespected by NASCAR by getting fined. I believe that the simple fact of us not even having a conversation about this issue before I was hit with a fine has something to say about our relationship. What I said was 1 sentence taken completely out of context. Most drivers will tell you that we constantly have our AND nascars best interest in mind when speaking. On the other hand I am a person that worked very hard from the BOTTOM to get where I am today and someone telling me that I can give my 100 percent honest opinion really bothers me. Since being fined in 2010 I have been a lot more careful about what I say to media and I felt this past weekend felt completely in my rights to give a assessment of the question asked. I feel as if today NASCAR lost one of its biggest supporters vocally of where our sport is headed. So in the end there are no winners. I said today I would not pay the fine. I stand by that and will go through the process of appealing. Trust me, this is not about the money. It’s much deeper. I will now shift my focus on giving FedEx and my team what they deserve this weekend, a win.
I’m with Denny on this one and monitoring the tweet world it appears many in NASCAR nation is as well. Long time NASCAR drive/announcer Kyle Petty may have put it best when he said;
“I’m going to stand behind Denny on this one,” Petty said. “Just because it’s NASCAR’s ball and their ballpark and they make the rules doesn’t necessarily mean there can be censorship. There appears to be a lot of censorship in this fine. NASCAR wants drivers to have personalities and character and to express themselves, but only if they say positive and not negative things. I don’t know anyone who can do that.
NASCAR needs to reverse its decision to fine Hamlin. If they truly want the drivers to have personalities they need to understand that sometimes they may be criticized. Democracy long ago learned this valuable lesson about receiving criticism. NASCAR, throw the fine in the rubbish where it belongs. I’m off to purchase a Denny Hamlin hat as he now has a new fan. You go Denny!
Feel free to leave your comments below. You can follow me @JimLaplante and the site @LastWordonSport.
photo credit: Hans J E via photopin cc
