RICHMOND, Va. -- Furious. That is the only apt description for Joey Logano after Sunday night's race at Richmond Raceway. Denny Hamlin was just frustrated.
Logano was in a position to win his second race of the season while Hamlin was in a position to secure a top-three finish. Austin Dillon then wrecked them both on the final turn of overtime before winning his way into the playoffs.
"I beat him fair and square on the restart and he just pulls a chicken s*** move," Logano said about Dillon after the race. "He's a piece of crap. He sucks. He's sucked his whole career and now he's gonna be in the playoffs."
Another look at the contact coming to the finish line. pic.twitter.com/qG276PviFz
— NASCAR (@NASCAR) August 12, 2024
The final two laps of the race unfolded in a way that no one expected. Logano took the lead on the restart after starting on the front row next to Dillon. The Team Penske driver moved his way to the front of the pack while Dillon tried to chase him back down.
The moment of contact occurred after Logano took the white flag. Dillon drove to the rear of the No. 22 Ford and hit it from behind, sending it spinning.
This contact opened up the door for Hamlin to take the lead, but only for a moment. Dillon hooked Hamlin into the outside wall. The Richard Childress Racing driver crossed the start-finish line first and captured his first win since 2022. He just didn't make any friends in the process.
"I've seen Denny and Joey make moves that have been running people up the track to win," Dillon said during his post-race press conference. "This is the first opportunity in two years for me to be able to get a win. I drove in there and kept all four tires turning across the start-finish line.
"And to me, I've seen a lot of stuff over the years in NASCAR where people move people, and it's just part of our sport."
Hamlin met with media members on pit road after the race, a mandatory stop before he made his way to the NASCAR hauler for a closed-door discussion with competition officials.
Hamlin said that this contact was a byproduct of the current playoff format in NASCAR. A win means everything. It locks a driver into the playoffs and it moves them to the next round. A win secures a championship and eliminates other drivers from contention.
This format creates drama, but Hamlin says there is a steep cost.
"In my mind, your sport has mud on its face," Hamlin said. "There's probably people (at NASCAR headquarters) in Daytona that love this s*** and they are the ones that are sending this sport backwards."
Of course, the win is what matters to Dillon and Richard Childress Racing at this point in the regular season when looking at the bigger picture.
Dillon was 32nd in points entering Sunday night's race. Once the points reset, he will be 16th. This is a huge gain for a team that struggled to even contend for top-10 finishes all season long.
There will certainly be critical comments directed toward Dillon and his team. Owner Richard Childress even acknowledged that drivers could deliver "retribution."
But at this point, Logano being furious and Hamlin's being frustrated don't matter to Dillon and RCR. Neither do the critical comments. The reason is that Dillon did what he is paid to do.
"You have one job to do -- to get to the start-finish line first," Dillon said. "A lot of people lose their jobs because they don't get to the start-finish line first."