Denny Hamlin reacts to Justin Allgaier ignoring order to pit at Charlotte, costing him the win

Denny Hamlin had some advice for Justin Allgaier after his pit road mistake at the NASCAR Xfinity Series race at Charlotte Motor Speedway. On the Actions Detrimental podcast, Hamlin reacted to Allgaier ignoring the order to pit, which ultimately cost him the win.

“Not good. Drivers are not crew chiefs,” Denny Hamlin said. “I’ve found that the most successful way to do things is just listen to whatever the crew chief says. You could debate them and sometimes maybe influence the crew chief, but they have a way bigger picture than you up on that pit box.

“To give Justin credit, I think if the race only had one of those restarts , maybe two, I think he still has a good shot at it. But they would run a corner, the guys with new tires would pick up two spots, caution. Pick up two spots, caution. Next thing you know, they were right on his ass and he had no shot.”

Justin Allgaier explains why he didn’t pit late in the Charlotte race

Hamlin also explained why Justin Allgaier decided to not pit. “What Justin probably felt… The only thing is that he had 30-some laps on his tires,” Hamlin said. “It wasn’t like he had 10 or 15. You would think that they got some sort of wear to them. He’s thinking, ‘Well, I’m still running a pretty good pace. …Okay, this caution I’m going to fire back off within two-tenths of my fastest lap. I’ll get half of that back or maybe more from cooling the tires off.’ He had a decent buffer, but just not enough with all those crazy cautions at the end.”

Allgaier led 103 laps but lost the race to William Byron. After the race, Allgaier said he should listened to his team and pitted late in the race.

“Being the leader is a tough spot in that regard,” he said on The CW broadcast. “I saw that the 00 [Sheldon Creed] was heading to stay out anyway, and to be honest with you, you know, Jim Pohlman, this whole 7 team, they do an amazing job, and I should have just come down pit road.

“All things aside, I thought that there were gonna be a lot of games played on pit road, I felt like. And I felt like if things kind of got settled out and they had to travel through all of that traffic, that we were going to maybe net okay. Then all those cautions one after another, really, just, it was great because we were able to hold those guys off.”

On3’s Jonathan Howard contributed to this story.