DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. (AP) — Denny Hamlin couldn’t help but think negatively.
A day after being dealt the toughest — and oddest — penalty of his 20-year NASCAR career, Hamlin was still trying to cope with what it might do to his season and his chances of finally winning a Cup Series championship.
“It’s hard to not feel and be negative in the moment,” Hamlin said at Daytona International Speedway on Friday. “And I am in the moment. I feel negative about it, not about the decision or anything like that, just about our season and potentially what it could or couldn’t do.”
NASCAR docked Hamlin 75 points and 10 playoff points Thursday, eliminating any shot he had at winning the regular-season title and making his path toward a championship more difficult.
The hefty penalty was handed down because Hamlin’s race-winning engine from Bristol Motor Speedway in March was rebuilt by manufacturer Toyota before NASCAR could tear it down and inspect it. The sanctioning body also fined Hamlin’s crew chief at Joe Gibbs Racing, Chris Gabehart, $100,000.
Toyota Racing Development self-reported what Hamlin called a “colossal mistake.”
NASCAR issued the same penalty it would to any team that alters an engine before being inspected. Even Hamlin’s competitors acknowledged that there was no intent to cheat, NASCAR avoided dealing in any gray area.
“I’m certainly more in favor of just run the rules as they are,” Hamlin said. “This put a lot of people in some really hard positions for sure, but NASCAR did what was right and that was go by the rule book.”
Hendrick Motorsports driver Kyle Larson said outsiders who think he would welcome the added advantage that comes with Hamlin’s punishment would be wrong.
“I was bummed to see that,” said Larson, who drives for Chevrolet. “It’s a huge penalty and one that can, for sure, affect your season in a negative manner. That goes a long way. You want everybody to have a fair shot.
“At least from what I understand, it wasn’t like they were cheating. It was a mistake. But a mistake is a mistake, and you have to pay for it. It’s just a bummer for their team and for competition.”
Added Martin Truex Jr., who is teammates with Hamlin at JGR: “I don’t know what’s right. It doesn’t feel right, but somebody’s going to take the fall.”
Hamlin, who was third in the Cup standings and 28 points behind leader Tyler Reddick, dropped to sixth and out of contention for the regular-season title with two races remaining. His playoff points fell from 21 to 11, leaving him less room for error in the opening three races of the postseason.
“It’s still up to us to go out there and win races and perform. If we have the results that equal the same as our performance, we’ll still make it and everything will be fine. It’s just the sample size is about to get real small, and it just takes away all that room for error in a time where our sport can be random.”
AP auto racing: https://apnews.com/hub/auto-racing
FILE - Denny Hamlin is introduced before a NASCAR Cup Series race, Sunday, June 23, 2024, at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, in Loudon, N.H. (AP Photo/Steven Senne, File)
FILE - Denny Hamlin climbs out of his car during qualifications for the NASCAR Cup Series auto race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Saturday, July 20, 2024, in Indianapolis. (AP Photo/Darron Cummings, File)
BOSTON (AP) — A study that explores the feasibility of using pigeons to guide missiles and one that looks at the swimming abilities of dead fish were among the winners Thursday of this year’s Ig Nobels, the prize for comical scientific achievement.
Held less than a month before the actual Nobel Prizes are announced, the 34th annual Ig Nobel prize ceremony at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was organized by the Annals of Improbable Research magazine’s website to make people laugh and think. Winners received a transparent box containing historic items related to Murphy’s Law — the theme of the night — and a nearly worthless Zimbabwean $10 trillion bill. Actual Nobel laureates handed the winners their prizes.
“While some politicians were trying to make sensible things sound crazy, scientists discovered some crazy-sounding things that make a lot of sense,” Marc Abrahams, master of ceremonies and editor of the magazine, said in an e-mail interview.
The ceremony started with Kees Moliker, winner of 2003 Ig Noble for biology, giving out safety instructions. His prize was for a study that documented the existence of homosexual necrophilia in mallard ducks.
“This is the duck,” he said, holding up a duck. “This is the dead one.”
After that, someone came on stage wearing a yellow target on their chest and a plastic face mask. Soon, they were inundated with people in the audience throwing paper airplanes at them.
Then, the awards began — several dry presentations which were interrupted by a girl coming on stage and repeatedly yelling “Please stop. I'm bored.” The awards ceremony was also was broken up by an international song competition inspired by Murphy's Law, including one about coleslaw and another about the legal system.
The winners were honored in 10 categories, including for peace and anatomy. Among them were scientists who showed a vine from Chile imitates the shapes of artificial plants nearby and another study that examined whether the hair on people's heads in the Northern Hemisphere swirled in the same direction as someone's hair in the Southern Hemisphere.
Other winners include a group of scientists who showed that fake medicine that causes side effects can be more effective than fake medicine that doesn't cause side effects and one showing that some mammals are cable of breathing through their anus — winners who came on stage wearing a fish-inspired hats.
Julie Skinner Vargas accepted the peace prize on behalf of her late father B.F. Skinner, who wrote the pigeon-missile study. Skinner Vargas is also the head of the B.F. Skinner Foundation.
“I want to thank you for finally acknowledging his most important contribution,” she said. “Thank you for putting the record straight.”
James Liao, a biology professor at the University of Florida, accepted the physics prize for his study demonstrating and explaining the swimming abilities of a dead trout.
“I discovered that a live fish moved more than a dead fish but not by much,” Liao said, holding up a fake fish. “A dead trout towed behind a stick also flaps its tail to the beat of the current like a live fish surfing on swirling eddies, recapturing the energy in its environment. A dead fish does live fish things.”
Professor James Liao displays a stuffed fish while accepting a prize for physics for demonstrating and explaining the swimming abilities of a dead trout during a performance at the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass., Thursday, Sept. 12, 2024. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)
A team of researchers perform a demonstration during a performance showing that many mammals are capable of breathing through their anus while accepting the 2024 Ig Nobel prize in physiology at the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in Cambridge, Mass., Thursday, Sept. 12, 2024. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)
People in the audience throw paper airplanes toward the stage during a performance at the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass., Thursday, Sept. 12, 2024. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)
FILE - Students walk past the "Great Dome" atop Building 10 on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology campus in Cambridge, Mass, April 3, 2017. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa, File)
