Brad Keselowski was definitely not thrilled after he failed to snap his 46-race winless streak, especially due to no fault of his own. While the RFK Racing driver sweeped two stages of the race, he ultimately fell short in front of William Byron’s pace due to multiple restarts. The Iowa Corn 350 race was essentially a fuel mileage race being littered with twelve cautions in 72 laps. However, among those also were a series of 7 cautions within 65 laps that enabled Byron to stretch his fuel cell to 144 laps. “Got back by a lot of guys…got all the way up to third, but that was as far as I could get,” Keselowski had calmly stated after the race. Denny Hamlin, however, wasn’t too pleased.

It all centered around Kyle Larson, who infamously delivered a fiery rant, “How much f—— room do I have to leave people?” after being fed up with a crash on lap 253, and Chase Elliott. The #5 driver was seemingly hoping to carry forward the momentum of his Indianapolis runner-up finish, but ended up with a P28 instead, thanks to multiple encounters in search of a top ten spot with his teammate. On a Stage 2 restart, they ran three-wide, when contact with Elliott almost got Larson loose. However, with just under 100 laps to go, things really went sideways for Larson as he made contact with Christopher Bell, and never really recovered. Still, it’s all on the HMS duo as per Hamlin.

On the August 4 episode of the Actions Detrimental podcast, the topic of cautions came up as expected. The Joe Gibbs Racing driver’s co-host asked, “What do you think contributed to all these late cautions? We had this stretch of the race where it was caution, caution, caution, caution, caution. You guys couldn’t keep it green.” To this, Hamlin began, “I mean the only thing to do is kind of publicly shame, but like Chase Elliot and Kyle Larson laying back three car lengths on the field and then getting a run and going four-wide, that’s what causes the wrecks,” when he was asked if the drivers do that to pass the cars.

While the veteran driver agreed, he then said, “But you’re not supposed to. You’re not allowed to do that. NASCAR is not calling it…I think it’s what their driver instructor is telling them to do…’Do it as much as you can get away with it’. But you know what? I’m calling on as NASCAR officiating to do something about it because it’s a complete disregard for the people that you’re laying back from…”

“You’re just willing to stick them in a four-wise situation where they’re going to wreck or someone’s going to wreck and you just don’t care. And that’s what happened with the Larson and Chase thing is that they laid back so much—they must have been running 10 miles an hour faster, probably more than that—the cars in front of them…they all took off and then they both tried to shoot the gap at the same time in the middle. It’s like they both deserve to wreck,” he further said.

Clearly, Denny Hamlin is not too happy with Chase Elliott and Kyle Larson’s moves. He has more reason to be, as his teammate could not get ahead either.

Falling short of the race lead

Chase Briscoe has been flying high in the 2025 season. Some had doubts about his joining Joe Gibbs Racing and a new OEM, but he has performed spectacularly. With 11 top-10s, 9 top-5s, and over 300 laps led, Briscoe has shown impressive consistency and speed. His lone win came at Pocono Raceway, and he currently sits 8th in the standings with 640 points, firmly in playoff contention. After all, the No. 19 JGR Toyota has clinched a series-leading six pole positions this season. Yet sadly, Briscoe has not been able to convert those into race victories, including the Iowa Corn 350 pole, where he finished second.

He clung to the front row throughout most of the race, and was in a great spot to go for the win, closing the gap to Byron as the No. 24 team worried about fuel. But, unfortunately, the racer began to fall off and was unable to mount a serious challenge to Byron. “There at the end, I was running William down. I thought I was really in the catbird seat there, and I just got there and kind of stalled out. Kind of experienced that when I was leading earlier. I caught the back of the field, and same thing; as soon as I got there, I just kind of died.” He continued, “Our day kind of got flipped upside down whenever that caution came out and trapped us and was able to rebound. Congrats to William. He did a really good job, and go on to the next one.”

Hence, a lot of race leaders could not achieve their maximum potential in Iowa. Hopefully, Denny Hamlin’s qualms with HMS do not persist in the next weekend.