Hamlin vs Keselowski - Making good news fodder for the NASCAR Nationwide Series

O.k. I have to admit I was a bit ticked off at Brad Keselowski for taking out Denny Hamlin on Saturday in the Nationwide race at PIR.

Why? Its not because I’m a Denny Hamlin fan - don’t get me wrong its not like I dislike him I’m just not a fan.

Anyway the real reason I was mad at Brad is because he wrecked it for my son - I know personal reasons are never good, but I digress for the moment. You see Hamlin was driving the Super Mario car and since my son is big into everything Mario Hamlin’s car gave him something to cheer for and a reason to watch NASCAR.

If you are a long time reader of NASCAR Ranting and Raving you’ll know it is a battle for me to even get my son in the same room as the TV when NASCAR is on, so I was overjoyed when he said he would watch the race with me on Saturday.

Things were going great as Hamlin was near the front most of the time until Keselowski spun him out and my son’s interest significantly dwindled as a result.

Oh well such is life, but it still ticks me off ever so slightly for another more important reason - What the heck was he thinking when he did that?

Bumping Hamlin once was fine, you know “you do it to me and I’ll do it to you” but to do it a second time on the rear corner of the car was crazy. To me it seemed that the second bump was clearly ment to spin Hamlin out and not ment to be much of anything else.
And then the pirana-like television media swims in to get the all important sound bites of the drivers after the race feeding them information about each other like children on a schoolyard trying to get the two most disliked kids in the school to fight each other.

Not that I’m complaining, I enjoyed watching it and to be honest with you I think Hamlin was wronged by Keselowski and that his little tiraid about ‘cashing his chips in next week’ is somewhat justified - although if it were me I probably wouldn’t have said anything about it as now NASCAR would be aware of what I had planned, but you know its the heat of the moment kind of thing with cameras, microphones and tape recorders all around making you feel like you have to say something.

If anything I think there will be more people watching the next Nationwide race than normal just to see if anything else happens between the two.

If I were Keselowski’s team I’d be bringing my least liked car to Homestead as I have a feeling it will not come back to the shop looking as good as it left.

Keselowski may as well try to get Target as a sponsor as he’ll be driving a car with one on it next race - what is NASCAR going to do if Hamlin does soemthing? Its the last race of the season after all. As one person twittered ‘they’ll just put him on probation until Dec 31st’.