Denny Hamlin on recent boos from angry NASCAR fans: ‘Rather be booed than ignored’

Denny Hamlin on his frustration with Alex Bowman, his haters and his championship hopes.

PHOENIX — Denny Hamlin was greeted by a chorus of boos as he gave his post-race interview after Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series race at Martinsville Speedway.

Late in the race, Hamlin and eventual winner Alex Bowman were fighting for the lead and made contact on the track, sending Hamlin’s No. 11 Toyota for a spin before he ultimately finished 24th. And then, while still in the car, Hamlin confronted Bowman on the track, interrupted the No. 48 Chevrolet driver’s victory celebration and flipped him off. And then called him “an absolute hack” in the pit road interview.

But between the boos and controversy and competing Sunday at Phoenix Raceway for his first NASCAR championship, Hamlin embraces it all and said: “My life is chaos, and I thrive under chaos.”

He even welcomes the boos.

“Rather be booed than ignored,” Hamlin said Thursday. “The moment you’re ignored, it’s bad news. You’re on your way out. … It’s just fuel for me. My tank is absolutely full with motivation.”

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Martinsville on Sunday wasn’t the first time Hamlin angered fans at the Virginia short track. Most notably, during the 2017 Martinsville playoff race, he wrecked Chase Elliott, NASCAR’s reigning most popular driver who’s also competing against Hamlin for the title.

Fans weren’t too happy about that, but Hamlin said popularity among them doesn’t matter to him “because it doesn’t correlate to common sense.”

“We were the guys that were crashed, and we were booed?” he continued. “I’m confused. What’s going on? Obviously, people were passionate about their driver, which, that’s OK. But, honestly, it doesn’t make any sense in the grand scheme of what’s actually going on. It’s just bitter fans from half a decade ago. They just cannot get over it.”

However, Hamlin did credit Elliott for handling the weight of his popularity “really, really well.”

But, the No. 11 driver said: “As soon as you do something negative towards someone who is very popular, you will forever have that kind of badge on your uniform.”

Hamlin also brought up the issue of respect on the track with how he felt Bowman raced him. Bowman was a playoff driver but had been eliminated before the Martinsville race. Hamlin said Bowman “just didn’t respect my position” and is still mad at him for racing with “a lack of situation awareness,” as the No. 11 team was still competing for a spot in the Championship 4.

Of course, Hamlin and his team still advanced to the title race, but that was no guarantee. And he pointed to the feud between Elliott and Kevin Harvick, which developed early in the playoffs over how the two raced each other. It then escalated at Charlotte Motor Speedway’s Roval race when Harvick punted Elliott’s car, which smacked the wall.

“There was controversy a few weeks ago, right?” Hamlin said. “And eventually, one of the drivers said, ‘I’ve had enough, I’m done taking your [expletive], I’m going to crash you.’ I think that that probably needs to happen a little bit more often to get some of the respect back.

“Obviously, NASCAR’s not going to police the stuff. This is stuff that certainly fuels popularity. The drivers have to get back to self-policing I think. That probably is going to have to come through the hard way.”

Although there were no official penalties, NASCAR officials did intervene after the Roval race and threatened Harvick’s and Elliott’s teams with “serious consequences” if their on-track feud didn’t cease, the Associated Press reported.

As far as this weekend’s championship race goes, Hamlin said he has a business-as-usual approach and just wants to have fun and win his first title. But the competition is steep, and he has little doubt that at some point, he and the other title contenders — Elliott, Kyle Larson and Martin Truex Jr. — will be running 1-2-3-4.

Hamlin has had a successful, storied career with 16 full-time Cup Series season and 46 wins, including three Daytona 500s (2016, 2019, 2020), but a championship has continued to elude him. He’s arguably the most successful NASCAR driver ever without a title on his resume.

And while Hamlin obviously wants to win on Sunday, he said he’s “at peace with whatever the result is.”

“Certainly this year, I’ve just been more comfortable in general with who I am, the accomplishments that we’ve had,” Hamlin said. “I’ve accomplished way more than I ever would have imagined, for sure.

“I’m content, and I’m at peace with, like, myself and my career. I could quit on Monday — maybe I will, maybe I won’t — and be happy with everything I’ve done.”

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