NASCAR: Denny Hamlin proves Matt DiBenedetto was right

Matt DiBenedetto was ripped to shreds for an “insensitive” comment he made toward the end of the 2021 NASCAR season. Denny Hamlin just proved him right.

After last October’s NASCAR Cup Series playoff race at Martinsville Speedway, Kyle Busch used an offensive word in an interview which resulted in NASCAR requiring him to take sensitivity training before the start of the 2022 season.

Matt DiBenedetto quote-tweeted Fox Sports reporter Bob Pockrass when Pockrass reported that Busch would be required to take this training, news which wasn’t much of a shock considering how other similar incidents involving offensive language had been handled.

DiBenedetto simply stated the following.

"“I feel like living on planet Earth in 2021 is permanent sensitivity training *laughing emoji*”"

Some individuals misconstrued this as DiBenedetto minimizing the need for Busch to take sensitivity training, when it was really nothing more than him pointing out the need to be extra careful in this day and age. And who can argue that?

Even before the backlash, DiBenedetto stated in a separate Instagram story, “Trying to bring light hearted humor to our crazy world *laughing emoji*”.

The criticism got to be too much, however, that the 30-year-old Grass Valley, California native ended up deactivating his Twitter account — but not before stating the following.

"“Comments below are proving my point. Social media and this day in age made me sad. Attacking people has become the norm even through light hearted humor. We as humans are our own worst enemies”"

Now here we are in 2022, and another incident has vindicated DiBenedetto even more so.

Following Sunday’s race at Talladega Superspeedway, Denny Hamlin posted a Family Guy clip of a woman attempting to “cross eight lanes” of traffic with no signal.

He posted it in reference to Kyle Larson’s ill-advised move up the race track coming to the checkered flag, which resulted in both of Hamlin’s cars, the 23XI Racing Toyotas of Kurt Busch and Bubba Wallace, being badly damaged.

Skip ahead a couple days, and now Hamlin needs to take sensitivity training as well, simply because some believed he was “racist” by posting the video.

Why? Because the woman in the video is Asian, and Larson happens to be of Asian descent.

Hamlin clearly had no malintent, as was evident in his apology, one which came after he deleted both the clip itself as well as the tweet defending the clip against initial backlash.

But like DiBenedetto implied, you can literally not be too careful in this day and age, or you run the risk of falling victim to “cancel culture”.

If any other driver had done what Larson did, nobody would have given the video a second thought. But there will always be those looking for a reason to be offended and play the victim card, and this was a perfect opportunity to inject the idea of race into a situation where it was clearly not intended.

So yes, perhaps instead of criticizing — or, more or less, pretending to be offended by — Matt DiBenedetto, we should embrace the concept that living on planet Earth in 2021 (now 2022) is permanent sensitivity training, because he’s not wrong. The Denny Hamlin situation proves it. Otherwise, who knows what may be misconstrued by the wrong people moving forward.