NASCAR: Bigger issue that needs to be addressed?

Denny Hamlin pinned the aggressiveness of the new generation of NASCAR drivers on lack of respect, though he admitted that even the veterans make mistakes.

Following his win at Richmond Raceway this past Sunday afternoon, his first win of the 2022 NASCAR Cup Series season, Joe Gibbs Racing’s Denny Hamlin spoke with Jim Rome on the Jim Rome Show about the aggressiveness of the younger generation of drivers.

Hamlin’s first win of the season made him the seventh different winner in the first seven races of the Next Gen car era, and three of the other six winners entered the year without a victory.

One of those first-time winners, Trackhouse Racing Team’s Ross Chastain, earned his first career win just one week before Hamlin earned his first win of the year.

Chastain won the race at Circuit of the Americas after late contact with Kaulig Racing’s A.J. Allmendinger.

Rome asked Hamlin about his post-race quote regarding Chastain’s move on Allmendinger at the end of the race.

He asked specifically about his statement that there are no longer any consequences for making such moves and how drivers can now basically do whatever they want — and the idea that this has become accepted.

The 41-year-old Chesterfield, Virginia native believes that it comes down to a bigger issue than simply drivers being aggressive. He believes it boils down to a lack of respect.

“The newer, younger generation that came in, it just seems like they are more aggressive,” Hamlin stated. “Now, more aggressive is fine, but I think it’s just — you could talk about a much bigger subject here of like just the lack of respect that people have for each other nowadays. All you have to do is log on Twitter to find that.”

It’s certainly hard to argue against that, given some of the things that take place on social media. But does that same attitude really carry over to the race track among professional drivers?

“When we feel like there’s a barrier between us, people talk a lot of stuff,” he continued. “And when you’re in a car and you don’t have to answer to that person face to face, you’re willing to do things that you wouldn’t if you had to answer to it. And I think in the past, what happened is, you got wrecked or knocked out of the way, you’d get your front teeth knocked out.”

However, things are different now in Hamlin’s eyes.

“Nowadays, crew members protect their guys, and it’s very corporate, very different sport than what it used to be,” he explained. “So these young guys feel like — and it’s not always young guys, us old veterans, we make our mistakes too — but they’re just more aggressive in thinking that, ‘Hey, the risk is worth the reward because the reward is winning, the risk is, eh, I might get a little backlash here and there and I might have to worry about that guy wrecking me in the future.’ But people just think it’s worth it nowadays.”

We have seen Hamlin take a similar approach in the past — we all know the incident to which I’m referring — and there were consequences, consequences that kept him from battling for the 2017 championship.

But since then, he’s right; there have been almost too many others to count.