The NASCAR Ford teams haven’t exactly had a season to brag about so far. While Brad Keselowski finally put a Ford Mustang Dark Horse race car in Victory Lane for the first time in 2024 just last weekend, The Blue Oval has been struggling to win this year. However, the teams have been close several times, and Toyota driver Denny Hamlin says not to count Ford out quite yet. In fact, according to a report from Essentially Sports, Hamlin feels threatened by Ford’s resurgence.
Considering that Hamlin, driver of the No. 11 Toyota TRD Camry, has three wins so far this year just to himself, the fact that he’s worried about the NASCAR Ford teams as competitors speaks volumes. On a podcast after last weekend’s race at Darlington, Hamlin said that he was surprised by Ford’s speed at the short track, considering that much of the race was dominated by a Camry that Hamlin himself owns.
“They had some better, you know, had some good finishes between Richmond of last year,” Hamlin said. “Now, I just I never really saw them as a big threat to win the race until they showed the speed that they did this weekend.”
Hamlin was understandably a bit sore about the finish at Darlington. The No. 45 Camry of Tyler Reddick, owned by Hamlin, was out front with under 30 laps left, but contact with the No. 17 Mustang of Chris Buescher put both cars off the pace and allowed Keselowski the opening he needed to win. In fact, Hamlin blamed Keselowski for the incident – at least in part.
“I think it [the contact between Tyler Reddick and Brad Keselowski] certainly put [Reddick] on tilt,” he said. “I think that it definitely probably played a factor in his give-a-damn being busted. Yeah! More than likely.”
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Comments
What? Hamlin is full of it. Anyone who watched that race saw Brad K. race Reddick cleanly for several laps before Buescher passed them both only to have Reddick push Buescher into the outside wall and cut down his own tire in the process. Reddick even admitted it was his fault. If anything Brad showed him how a real race car driver should race.
ABSOLUTELY CORRECT!!!
Kudos to Brad Kesalowski and Ford winning!
Smartest thing Reddick did was keep his helmet on when Buescher paid him a visit