Denny Hamlin gifts Todd Gilliland free pass at Kansas in strategic move, Gilliland reacts

There are often little moments on the racetrack that go unseen or unmentioned by the race broadcast that mean the world to individual drivers. Denny Hamlin gifted one such moment to Todd Gilliland early on at Kansas on Sunday.

Gilliland was being lapped on the track, with Hamlin passing him to put him a lap down. At that point, Gilliland did his best to stick with Hamlin as best he could.

It resulted in a tremendous run for Todd Gilliland, with the driver of the No. 34 car passing about six other cars toward the end of Stage 1 as he hotly tailed Hamlin. Then things would get even better for him.

Hamlin made the decision to ease up on the lapped cars, noting he planned to give the free pass to Ricky Stenhouse Jr., who was one car behind Gilliland. So Gilliland got a free pass from Hamlin at the end of the stage, getting back onto the lead lap.

After the race, Todd Gilliland found a tweet from journalist Matt Weaver about the pass and retweeted it with a simple message. He was thrilled with how things played out.

“Your my GOAT [Denny Hamlin],” Gilliland tweeted. He quote-tweeted Weaver’s post.

So why would Hamlin opt to let Todd Gilliland pass him at the end of the stage like that? Weaver provided an easy explanation.

“The 11 ain’t getting beat by the 34,” Weaver wrote, answering a fan. “No doubt, Denny is thinking that exact sequence could be the race for the win, lapping those exact same cars, and now Todd owes him one. So now Todd feels compelled to give one back and it could come when Denny needs it most.”

Funny enough, that scenario very nearly did play out. Hamlin was in the lead with about 20 laps to go, trying to hold off a hard-charging Tyler Reddick. He came up on several lapped cars, though not Todd Gilliland.

In any case, some late chaos in the race erased the importance of the lapped cars late. A Cody Ware spin sent the race to overtime, where Tyler Reddick managed to outrace Hamlin, Christopher Bell and ultimately Kyle Larson for the win.

Still, it’s cool to see interactions like the one involving Denny Hamlin and Todd Gilliland in a seemingly unimportant position in the race. You never know when it might come back around.