Denny Hamlin Blames NASCAR's 'Bad Leadership' for Next Gen Car Safety Issues

Denny Hamlin, the 48-time NASCAR Cup race-winning driver, finished fifth in Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series YellaWood 500 at Talladega Superspeedway, but was not exactly smiling on the way out of town.

That's because Denny Hamlin, the team owner, was not happy with what's happening with the series' Next Gen Car when it comes to driver safety. The safety issues with the new car for 2022 is something the co-owner of 23XI Racing has dealt with personally, both on the driver side and the owner side.

On August 31, Hamlin withdrew from the Xfinity Series at Darlington due to ongoing soreness from a wreck in the Cup race the previous week at Daytona. And, going all the way back to July 23, one of his drivers—Kurt Busch—suffered a head injury in a crash in qualifying that has kept him on the sidelines ever since.

Similarly, Hendrick Motorsports' Alex Bowman was involved in a crash at Texas Motor Speedway on September 25 and had to withdraw with concussion-like symptoms from this past weekend's Playoff race at Talladega.

Interestingly enough, both the Bowman and Busch crashes had a similar look, with both car's back ends getting loose and smashing into the wall.

In response to these comments, NASCAR president Steve Phelps called a meeting with Hamlin. When he was approached about Sunday's meeting, Hamlin said: “I don’t have any details on it, but I am great friends with Steve Phelps.”

Hamlin also insisted that Steve is “A leader that we need” and in his comments he “Made it clear (he) was not directing anything at (Steve).”

Does Hamlin have a point? Are the rash of crashes and injuries NASCAR's fault, or is it just drivers driving on the edge? Start the discussion in the comments section below.