"We're just going to have to be exceptional": Denny Hamlin opens up on mindset to recover from NASCAR's heavy penalty

Denny Hamlin recently touched on the true impact of his L2 level penalty that NASCAR handed to him before Saturday's race. He had 75 points from his regular season championship tally, and 10 from his playoffs tally taken off by NASCAR. This left him in a pretty dire state from where he was before the penalty.

Hamlin opened up on the true extent of his penalty recently on his podcast show, "Actions Detrimental" as he said:

"You can look at it and say, 'It's just a 10 point penalty.' But it isn't. Look where I'm at now. I'm 8th in points. I was battling for the regular season championship which would've paid 15 points and now the most I'm probably going to get is 3. Just a huge swing for us. It's going to be upwards of 16, maybe 17 points, per round, that we're going to miss out on and we know that these cutlines come down to the number, always does." [9:20]

Denny Hamlin recalled the iconic Hail Melon move from 2022, which as spectacular as it was for Ross Chastain, spelled doom for the #11 driver. This is because Chastain, by making that move and finishing ahead of Hamlin ensured that he found a spot in the final 4, and not the Joe Gibbs Racing driver.

Hamlin further recalled the margin of 4 points at Martinsville and the Kevin Harvick-Kyle Busch incident from 2020.

"It always comes down to a few points here and there. So we're just going to have to be exceptional, and not make any mistakes at all which is very, very hard. Because as good as we've been, our results over the last two months have been atrocious," Denny Hamlin added.

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Denny Hamlin explains why he cannot appeal against NASCAR's penalty

As his co-host Jared Allen mentioned the difficulty of the Round of 12 in the playoffs, Denny Hamlin revealed what his mindset is heading into it. In this year's schedule, the Round of 12 in the playoffs has the trio of Kansas, Talladega, and the Charlotte ROVAL. And Hamlin has circled one of those as a must-win for himself.

"I need to go win Kansas, need to go win Kansas. That will be my mindset for sure. But if not then I'm going to do the best I can every single week. But obviously, it's a huge setback in this type of format, it's a killer," he said. [10:50]

When it was mentioned to Hamlin whether he can appeal and get some points back to ease up the damage by the penalty, he said he could appeal but it wouldn't bring any good.

"What are you going to appeal? It doesn't matter about the intent. When it comes to wrecking, yes intent matters, but when you have rules and infractions, and basically, what happened is black and white in the rulebook," Hamlin said.

He claimed that with his penalty, there's nothing to dispute. And while everyone can talk about the injustice or unfairness of it, Denny Hamlin emphasized that NASCAR views an engine manufacturer, the car owner, and the driver, not separately, but as one single entity.