Denny Hamlin's "joke" that 70 percent of NASCAR drivers take Adderall or a similar type of medicine to stay focused has not sat well with NASCAR officials and a number of drivers, including Kevin Harvick.
Hamlin renounced the comments made on a Barstool Sports podcast, but his words caught up to him after Sunday's Daytona 500. Darrell "Bubba" Wallace Jr. told Fox Sports that Hamlin "might have to take some Adderall" after their run-in at the end of the race.
NASCAR's chief racing development officer Steve O’Donnell called Hamlin's comments "ridiculous."
Harvick agrees.
"Those 70 percent of drivers he referred to are mad because of the fact that you’re the guy sitting in the trailer doing the drug testing 10 or 12 times a year from a random standpoint and understanding the things you can and can’t do," Harvick told SiriusXM NASCAR Radio. "Whether he thinks it was an off-the-cuff comment and something he meant to say or not to say, it still offended most everybody in the garage.
"If you’re going to play around, joking and think it’s not something that everybody is going to take offense to… I think he’s probably seeing that nobody really appreciated it and it put everybody in a bad spot."
Wallace and Hamlin have been feuding since Sunday, but Harvick says it could have all been avoided if Hamlin kept his "mouth shut."
"Obviously Denny has got himself into a few spots in the past little bit," Harvick said. "We don’t even need to go much further than that. You can look back at Martinsville (wrecking Chase Elliott) and look at the couple of instances he had during Speedweeks.
"Sometimes it’s better not to go on rants on Twitter and defend yourself, and sometimes you just need to quit talking and this is definitely, probably one of those instances. I would call it an edgy interview source where all this came from. Sometimes you’ve got to keep your mouth shut."
