Hamlin: Drivers Council statement a way to send message to NASCAR
RICHMOND, Virginia –Denny Hamlin reiterated Friday that the statement from the Drivers Council regarding Tony Stewart’s fine from NASCAR was a signal of support for a driver’s right to share his opinion.
Stewart was fined $35,000 Thursday, very likely for comments regarding the lack of a rule in NASCAR mandating teams fasten all five lugnuts on a pit stop. Fewer lug nuts on a wheel increase the chances of a loose wheel.
After Stewart’s fine was announced, the council issued a statement through Hamlin that said its members would pitch in to pay the penalty.
“When Tony informed us of the fine, we didn’t agree with it and no one agreed with it and we thought there was something we should do about it,” Hamlin said. “This was a way for us to send a message back to NASCAR, not that we were trying to send any specific message that we just believe that we should have the right to speak our opinion. I don’t know whether everyone agrees with the opinion he had or not, but it doesn’t matter. It’s what he was asked so he answered the question. I think that was the biggest thing for us. We should have the right to speak our opinion.”
Hamlin added he had not heard from NASCAR since the release of the statement Thursday evening.
Stewart, who said he was “P.O.’d” and “mad,” about the lack of the rule, cited the potential for an incident where a wheel comes off a car and a driver gets injured. While other drivers had previously mentioned possible safety concerns about the rule, Stewart was the first to be fined for his comments on the issue by NASCAR leading one to believe that the delivery of the message was more of an issue to NASCAR than the content was.
Do drivers believe the penalty came because of the words Stewart used when professing his concerns? Both Hamlin and Brad Keselowski said they weren’t sure where NASCAR had drawn the line regarding driver remarks.
“I don’t know where the line is, I don’t know if there is a line – obviously there is a line, but obviously we just believe that you should be able to express your opinion as long as you’re not just totally trashing the sport itself or anything like that,” Hamlin said.
The statement from the council makes it clear that the drivers don’t feel Stewart was trashing the sport.
“I would say that I don’t have an answer because I don’t know myself as well,” Keselowski said when asked if drivers had found a line. “It is murky waters for me.”
The council has a text message chain among its members; those members include Stewart, Hamlin, Kyle Busch, Dale Earnhardt Jr., Kevin Harvick, Keselowski, Jimmie Johnson and Kyle Larson. The committee was formed last year to help coordinate discussion of issues with NASCAR and the move to publicly rebuke NASCAR’s ruling is the first major public disagreement between the parties.
“I think that the driver’s interests and the owner’s interests is 95 percent aligned most of the time,” Hamlin said. “There’s some things that we feel like we would like to see changed, sometimes it doesn’t align with what NASCAR thinks or what the teams think, but I think that this was a pretty black and white thing from a driver’s perspective to have a guy that’s coming back and is in the middle of an interview and gets asked a question and he responds to the question and gets fined for it…”
“Our meetings with NASCAR have changed the sport and will continue to change the sport for many years. Mostly it’s all positive, every now and then we feel like we should show solidarity to a guy whose done a lot for the sport and we still don’t want to be so politically correct all the time and have to filter our thoughts and think about it because we have sponsors on our cars or owners we have to answer to or NASCAR, sometimes you just want to say what you feel and we feel like you should be able to do that at times.”
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Nick Bromberg is the editor of From The Marbles on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
