NASCAR Cup Series star says massive wreck 'best thing' in shock exit

Denny Hamlin has claimed that a massive 23-car wreck was the 'best thing' that happened last weekend at Atlanta.

The race at the superspeedway played host to the first round of the debut NASCAR Cup Series In-Season Challenge, which saw #1 seed Hamlin knocked out at the first possible chance.

The Joe Gibbs Racing star was, like more than half of the field, caught up in the lap 69 wreck after making contact with John Hunter Nemechek, effectively ending his race and allowing Ty Dillon to progress past him in the single elimination tournament.

Hamlin did stay in his car while his team worked on it for much of the rest of the race, picking up an extra six places with a few extra laps of running toward the end.

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Hamlin: Wreck created great space

Speaking on his Actions Detrimental podcast this week, Hamlin admitted that the wreck was the best thing possible for the spectacle of the race, breaking up the at-times monotonous two-lane train of cars that superspeedways can generate.

The veteran said: "That wreck was the best thing that happened to that race. There's no question about it whatsoever. What it did was it created space between the cars. We're not log-jammed two by two by two by two by two. There was space.

"There was only 15 cars, maybe, that were not damaged. If you look, all the passing that was done at the end of that race, it was created through space of the cars, and that's what we used to have on superspeedways is space to work."

While Hamlin is now out of the In-Season Challenge, he has bigger fish to fry – specifically finally winning his first ever Cup Series championship, having locked himself in as one of the favorites with three race wins already.

READ MORE: Denny Hamlin demoted after Atlanta wreck as Joe Gibbs Racing suffer blow

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