NASCAR resumes tomorrow (today, if you’re reading this on Sunday) at Talladega, and you may have some questions. The first may be whether Talladega is a particularly notable track outside from Ricky Bobby’s affiliation with it. The answer to this question is yes. It’s a runway. Cars get going. And more often than not, there are a whole lot of fireworks (yes, that means crashes). You might not have a second question. Or you might. If so, just ask. Or keep it to yourself.
Outside of the excitement associated with Talladega itself, there is, of course, the matter of NASCAR’s plot this year. As you know, if you read The Barking Crow’s NASCAR coverage with regularity, we’re all about the plot here. We want storylines. We want drama. We actively encourage the sport’s governing body to figure out a way to rig this whole thing like it’s WWE on Wheels™.
In trying to figure out where the storyline lies, we’ve probably given Denny Hamlin too little attention. After all, the guy keeps winning races. After last weekend’s victory, he’s in the center of our focus, especially because he and Corey LaJoie evidently have beef.
Who is Corey LaJoie?
Good question.
In NASCAR’s Cup Series, there are a few tiers of teams. There are good teams—teams with a lot of resources. Hendrick Motorsports, the team behind Chase Elliott (and others), is one of those teams. Team Penske, the team behind Joey Logano (and others), is one of those teams. Joe Gibbs Racing, the team behind Denny Hamlin (and others), is one of those teams. There are also some mid-level teams: Chip Ganassi Racing (Kurt Busch, et al.), Richard Childress Racing (Austin Dillon, et al.), probably some others. Then, there are the poor teams. Teams with sometimes just one driver. Teams which sometimes don’t have enough money to get a car into every race.
As you might expect, having a better team—a team with more resources—makes a driver’s car, on average, go faster. It’s an advantage to have money behind oneself, because that money pays for better engineers, better testing facilities, better equipment, etc.
There’s a debate, though, about how much it matters, and how much being good at driving matters. I don’t know the full story of LaJoie and Hamlin’s beef (I did for a few minutes, but it wasn’t exciting enough to retain it all), but I do remember some of it, and this question—being a good driver vs. having a good car—seems to have been, initially, the crux of the matter.
LaJoie drives for Go Fas Racing, which is one of the poors. It isn’t one of the super-poors—LaJoie runs in every race, as far as I know—but it’s not a secret that LaJoie’s car is not as fast as Hamlin’s. At some point—I think it was back when the iRacing was going on (and all the cars were the same, because they were simulations)—LaJoie and Hamlin got into it, probably on Twitter, about which of them would be faster if they were driving the same car (not at the same time, of course).
It escalated.
According to LaJoie, the back-and-forth got to a point where Hamlin texted LaJoie, threatening to wreck him at…Homestead? Maybe it was Martinsville. Think it was last weekend at Homestead, though. Anyway, the texts were allegedly sent to LaJoie, his owner, maybe his crew chief? Lot of texts allegedly sent. A meeting was allegedly had with NASCAR, because, well, they suspend people if wrecking is done with clear intent, and premeditation’s a special level of clear intent.
Anyway, Hamlin didn’t end up wrecking LaJoie, but LaJoie made the feud public, so eyes are on it heading into a race where everyone crashes anyway. Meaning…probably nothing.
It’s possible this is NASCAR’s plot twist—it’s possible they’re trying to make Hamlin the main character, and they’ve made LaJoie the sheep coming at the lion; it’s possible they’re trying to make LaJoie a lovable upstart, and Hamlin’s supposed to be the villain; it’s possible lists sound better if they’re three items long and I don’t have a third item for this one.
But it’s also possible this is just LaJoie getting in the middle of things accidentally, and Hamlin not being cool enough to smoothly shrug it off or brashly use it for motivation or just follow through with wrecking LaJoie.
The point is, this could be NASCAR’s move to develop the plot. If it is, though, it’s a weird strategy, because the Chase Elliott/Joey Logano conflict was way more fun and way less online.
We’ll take what we can get, though.
