Following Bubba Wallace‘s win at the Brickyard 400 on Sunday, team owner Denny Hamlin joined him in kissing the bricks at Indianapolis. Immediately Hamlin faced questions over it.
The driver of the No. 11 car, who’s also a co-owner of 23XI, Wallace’s team, was asked point blank if he was superstitious about kissing the bricks while also driving in the race. Hamlin finished P3.
“I’ll take every opportunity I can,” Hamlin said of kissing the bricks. “When those guys go out there and they get trophies, I make sure I get my own. Because I can assure you it’s much harder to win as a team owner than it is as a driver. Because Joe Gibbs and that whole team, they do all the work. I just, all I have to do each weekend is drive it, to the best of my ability. And I’ve got to send them in the right direction to make the car go faster.
“Building a team from scratch is a huge undertaking. So I just, you feel more gratification because I had my hand in every little piece of that race team, from the branding, to the sponsorship, to the competition, to the everything. So that’s why parents always feel much prouder when their kids accomplish something more than they do.”
Kissing the bricks is a symbolic gesture for the winners at Indianapolis. Hamlin himself has never won there, though he has finished in third four different times.
Still, he said he had no qualms about kissing the bricks with Wallace on Sunday. He’d do it again.
In fact, part of Hamlin was hoping the race might just end when the red flag came out for rain in Turn 1. That would have given Wallace the win without the chaos of an overtime restart.
As it turned out, Wallace managed to survive double overtime, getting an excellent jump on Kyle Larson both times out from the restart. It was a deserved win.
“I was super content with the race just ending,” Hamlin said. “But I felt the drops in Turn 1 and certainly at that point knew that it was inevitable we were going to have some shootouts. It didn’t look like that rain was going to stick around long.
“And then at that point I’m just hoping, because I know that I’m not really in a position in fourth where I’m going to win the race. Even on restarts there’s just not much, many options that you’ve got. So I’m just thinking at that time, ‘Man, I hope Bubba’s thinking through all the things he needs to do on those restarts. Getting through the gears.’ I knew the 24 wasn’t going to push him. So he had a tough task ahead of him, and I was just hoping he was going through his mental checklist of all the things he needed.”
Wallace did just that and secured the win, earning his chance at kissing the bricks. It snapped a 100-race winless streak and put him into victory lane and the playoffs. Not a bad day’s work for the 23XI driver. Or the co-owner.
