Just 27 laps into the regular season finale at Daytona International Speedway, a massive wreck collected about a dozen cars, including bubble driver Alex Bowman.
The wreck began when Bubba Wallace, Joey Logano, and Kyle Busch got tangled together in the tri-oval, and ultimately ended Wallace’s night, but also collected 23XI Racing teammate Riley Herbst, as well as his boss, Denny Hamlin.
On his weekly podcast, Actions Detrimental, Hamlin analyzed the wreck and the root cause of it.
“It looked like to me that Bubba just squeezed those two guys below him down,” explained Hamlin. “You could just see that they’re there, two cars on the inside. “I don’t know what Freddie [Kraft, #23 spotter] was calling. Maybe he was saying three wide top or not — I’m not sure, but he [Wallace] just squeezed on down there and there was no room. So he ended up wrecking himself, and obviously a few others.”
Some mentioned how Kyle Larson was pushing Wallace, and he may have had an impact on where that No. 23 ended up in that situation. However, Hamlin seemed to disagree.
“I’m looking at it and I don’t think so. The #5 [Larson] was already on him close, but no. That’s just the #23 not clear. It’s just one of those not clear moments.”
Hamlin soldiered on to a 25th-place finish, but it continues a streak of bad finishes for him at the iconic superspeedway. He crashed on the final lap of the 2025 Daytona 500 while battling for the win, and he has zero finishes higher than 17th in all eight Next Gen era races at the track. That is quite the surprise, as Hamlin is a three-time winner of the Daytona 500 with the previous generation of car.
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