Kevin Harvick assesses wreck involving Denny Hamlin, bulk of Atlanta NASCAR field

Denny Hamlin’s evening was destroyed at EchoPark Speedway (formerly known as Atlanta Motor Speedway) this past weekend due to a massive 23-car wreck. He went from the top-seed in the inaugural NASCAR In-Season Challenge to eliminated in the process.

The wreck was seemingly triggered by Hamlin making contact with John Hunter Nemechek on Lap 69. Fellow wheelmen like Brad Keselowski, Ryan Preece, Joey Logano, and Kyle Larson were collected, and Kevin Harvick tried to make sense of what went down during the latest episode of Kevin Harvick’s Happy Hour.

“When they all get stacked up like that and they’re not lined up perfectly, sometimes it just spits them out,” Harvick stated, regarding Hamlin’s incident. “That, to me, is what it looked like happened. It’s really hard to tell, when you get them connected like that, but it wiped out a bunch of them.”

Harvick’s co-host in Mamba Smith agreed with the sentiment, adding that the nose of the Toyotas could’ve been a reason why the wreck came about: “They started accordion-ing a little bit,” he added. “The point on the Toyotas is always something that we talk about for pushing. Even if you’re lined up, it’s kind of pointed. It can be a little hairy there. Unfortunately, for the most of the field, it became that.

“It changed the race dramatically because of how many cars — I think there was like, 23 cars in this wreck. Then, the runs are different. You can move and try to make a run by yourself.”

Hamlin wanted to be out there competing, but it wasn’t his night in Georgia. As for the rest of the field who avoided the accident, Harvick believes the sheer number of cars who ended up out of the race made for some better actions throughout the Quaker State 400.

“It was almost better with less cars,” Harvick said, regarding the racing on Saturday night. “You had more places to go. There was more space. There wasn’t such a long double file train of cars. It was like an old school Daytona slingshot race.”

Moving forward, Denny Hamlin will be hoping to keep his nose clean, but he’s already comfortably in the playoffs. He has three wins, so he can afford a stinker of a night like this past weekend’s race.

Unfortunately, it meant he was eliminated from the In-Season Challenge, as Ty Dillon survived the carnage to finish eighth. If anything, that what stings the most for the Joe Gibbs Racing wheelman.