Kevin Harvick responds to Ty Dillon trolling Denny Hamlin

Ty Dillon entered this past weekend’s Quaker State 400 at EchoPark Speedway (formerly known as Atlanta Motor Speedway) with a huge mountain to climb in the inaugural NASCAR In-Season Challenge. He was the very last seed, matched up against Denny Hamlin, the No. 1 overall seed in Round 1.

Well, Dillon ended up advancing. The Kaulig Racing wheelman moved on to Round 2 after a season-best eighth-place finish, while Hamlin wrecked early on and couldn’t recover. To add insult to injury, Dillon had a message for Hamlin and his fanbase after the race.

“For all you Denny fans out there, I just knocked your favorite driver out,” Dillon said on the TNT broadcast. Of course, it was a fun little dig at Hamlin, who has become known for saying, “I just beat your favorite driver” after some of his wins over the years.

As the dust settles on the weekend that was, Kevin Harvick evaluated Dillon’s performance and subsequent comments on the latest episode of Kevin Harvick’s Happy Hour. He had no problem with his comment, giving the 33-year-old the credit he deserves.

“Ty Dillon has run pretty respectable this year. It’s not like he’s just floundering around, like he has in the past several years. He’s legitimately run well this year,” Harvick explained. “I think, when you look at this bracket thing, it’s intriguing, it’s fun. This is fun.

“When you look through that bracket now, there’s not too many favorites in there. I mean, you’ve got Chase Elliott, obviously, in there. The most intriguing match up to me this week is Ty Gibbs against AJ Allmendinger at the road course. You know, a lot of the favorites got knocked out right off the bat, so this thing is going to get mixed up again here this weekend.”

In addition to Harvick heaping some praise on Dillon, his co-host in Mamba Smith defended the Welcome, North Carolina native’s performance, as well. If fans want more personality out of the drivers in the Cup Series, these are the type of comments you’re going to get.

“All the time we’re hearing that we want to see more character, more personality out of the drivers,” Smith stated. “Ty does a perfect clip. Like, that was perfectly placed and it was awesome, right? There’s so many people coming from my guy’s head like, ‘What have you won? What have you done? Denny wrecked. You didn’t really beat him.’

“Like bro, calm down. It’s entertainment. If Denny does it all the time, at some point, someone’s going to give it back. Don’t be mad that it was Ty Dillon, who was the one that was smart enough to think about getting to it.”

Time will tell if Ty Dillon can continue his run in the NASCAR In-Season Challenge after beating Denny Hamlin. He’s matched up against Brad Keselowski for this weekend’s race in Chicago. It’s certainly not out of the realm of possibility that he continues this run, and Kevin Harvick will be watching closely.