As the NASCAR Hall of Fame Class of 2024 was announced last week, an unexpected controversy erupted in some sections of the NASCAR world. When it was announced that Jimmie Johnson fell four votes shy of being unanimously inducted into the HoF, current drivers like Denny Hamlin and veterans like Kenny Wallace slammed voters who did not vote for the seven-time Cup Series winner. And by the looks of it, Hamlin is not done talking about it yet.
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On this week’s episode of Actions Detrimental, the JGR driver again brought up the fact that the Hendrick legend not being voted by some people made no sense at all. The #11 driver also pointed to some voters having their own agendas for voting for some people, something that is not unheard of in the sporting world.
Denny Hamlin still can’t wrap his head around the HoF voting
The JGR driver, who also took to Twitter to express his displeasure at the voting, was still frustrated at the four voters who chose not to have Johnson on the ballot.
Hamlin said, “You know I understand early on, the argument was Richard Petty wasn’t unanimous, Dale Earnhardt wasn’t unanimous; yeah, but you had the entire history of NASCAR on the ballot, like there were so many people that you could choose from and so many deserving people. But you can’t, you just cannot leave off.. and again, you vote for two people, so that means they voted two people over Jimmie Johnson. That doesn’t make any sense and to me, I believe NASCAR needs to be transparent.”
“Which tells you, it’s all political and this is someone, and I’ve heard from people that have been in that room that some of the guys that have been around a very long time, who go around the table and politik for their friends to get on the Hall of Fame. At lunchtime, they’ll go around and politik for their buddies. And so, I don’t like it for sure.”
“It’s not just for a champion like Jimmie, you know, it just doesn’t make any sense, and to me, you’re not taking that responsibility seriously, because, and I understand that there are other people that are deserving, but not as deserving as a seven-time, 80-win champion.”
“I just, I can’t make sense of it, other than, someone’s just being very petty.”
Kyle Petty has no issue with how the voting went down
Like Jimmie Johnson, Richard Petty is also a seven-time champion, and like Jimmie Johnson, Richard Petty was also not inducted unanimously into the Hall of Fame. Unsurprisingly, The King’s son and former NASCAR driver Kyle Petty has absolutely no issue with some voters not having Johnson on their ballots.
Petty said, “Just like Parker Kligerman has an opinion of watching Jimmie Johnson and believes him to be the GOAT. I respect that opinion from Parker because that’s who he saw race. I have to respect those four people for whatever reason that they saw fit that they didn’t think that Jimmie should go in…”
With the last of the seven-time champions also done, at this point it looks nearly impossible for NASCAR to have a unanimously inducted Hall of Famer. And like Kyle Petty said, if Johnson could not get in unanimously, no one can.
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