Denny Hamlin bemoans pit road issues at 23XI Racing: ‘It f***ing sucks’

The 23XI Racing tandem of Tyler Reddick and Bubba Wallace both fielded racecars capable of competing for a victory in Sunday’s Pennzoil 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

Both, however, had issues on pit road which impacted their respective races. In Reddick’s case, it was a 13-second stop on pit road during the final cycle of green flag pit stops. Reddick sat within a second of race leader Kyle Larson before entering the pits before him but was suddenly more than three seconds behind after getting back onto the racetrack. A caution with 32 laps remaining gave Reddick another chance, but he had to play catchup behind Larson.

To Reddick’s credit, he got within a car length of Larson with three laps to go, though he failed to make the final pass. Larson won the race, his second consecutive triumph at Las Vegas. As for Wallace, his bid for a quality finish let alone a race win ended after his team couldn’t get a lug nut off his left front wheel. His pit crew eventually had to cut it off, not before Wallace had gone 12 laps down.

Denny Hamlin, 23XI Racing co-owner, discussed the race team’s issues on pit road, which have been prevalent since the team made its Cup Series debut in 2021, during Monday’s “Actions Detrimental” podcast.

23XI Racing pit road issues resurface at Las Vegas

“This is the new team blues,” Hamlin said. “… When I had to start this damn team from scratch, I had nobody. And so, anybody that’s really good, they’re under long contracts. These teams lock these guys up for years and years and so, you’ve got nobody. You gotta find talent within the field somewhere that’s got experience. Or you try to get some young guys that are very inexperienced. And this is just part of starting a team and trying to do this on your own.

“I certainly feel like generally speaking, yes, this is a topic this weekend and it will be here in a few hours. But it’s a process. It f—— sucks. I know it sucks. It’s keeping the 23XI guys out of victory lane. No question about it. There was at least 2-3 victories that Tyler should’ve had last year that he didn’t get an opportunity to because we messed up for him on pit road.

“This is one where… if he has Kyle Larson’s pit crew, it’s gonna be a hell of a race. I’m not saying that he’s gonna beat Kyle because that’s gonna be a tough feat. I think that Kyle had a better short run car than him, generally speaking. But it would have been a hell of a battle and Kyle would have had his hands full most of the day versus just kinda cruising out to a 2-second lead and watching us in the rearview.

“I don’t know, this is the painful part about it. Pit crews have become such a big part of the result and a lot of it is certainly pit crews can take you out more than they’re going to help you, right. And what we hope to do is increase our speed in the offseason, increase our reliability of non-blowup stops, so that’s stops worse than 13 seconds or so. It’s a process. … Let’s try not to overreact too much after one event.”

Reddick couldn’t hide his frustration after the race, even with picking up a P2 result.

“Same s—, different year,” Reddick said.

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