Cup Series star Denny Hamlin admits he has been left confused by NASCAR's decision not to penalize anyone after two controversial wrecks at Chicagoland Speedway.

The first of those incidents came on lap 32 last Sunday when Zane Smith got into the back of Carson Hocevar's No. 77 Chevrolet into turn two, spinning him around and resulting in both cars wrecking into the wall.

Then, later in the race, Shane van Gisbergen and Austin Hill got tangled up, with the latter's team owner adamant that it was payback for a previous wreck that had happened a fortnight earlier at San Diego.

Despite both incidents seeming intentional, NASCAR decided not to hand out any penalties for these moves, instead opting to sit down and have a discussion with each of the pairs ahead of this Sunday's race.

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Denny Hamlin reacts to NASCAR penalty decision

Naturally, Hamlin was asked for his thoughts on NASCAR's decision ahead of this weekend's action at Atlanta, and the Joe Gibbs Racing star admits to feeling puzzled by the outcome.

“I can see where it can be mixed messaging," Hamlin explained to the media at EchoPark Speedway.

"But I just found it interesting that if they didn’t consider an intentional wreck, why are they insisting that it stops? If it was an accident, then it would just be organic.

"If you are ruling that it’s not intentional but saying it has to stop then you are saying they had the choice to wreck each other.

"I got a little confused on that one.”

Hamlin torn on wreck dilemma

Earlier this week, Hamlin also discussed the wrecks on his podcast, revealing that he was torn about whether NASCAR should step in or let the drivers self-police these things on the track.

“I'm torn on these wrecks,” Hamlin explained. “Because do I think that it's cool that someone goes and just wipes someone out? No. But I'm also a very firm fan of self-policing.

“I think that that has to be a thing in the sport because if you can't punch someone in the face without getting a fine. They always keep you separated; security's in there, you’ve got the teams getting involved. If you can't handle it off the race track, which I'm not really in favour of that because there are other people, you gotta let people self-police on the racetrack.

“And this is how you self-police, is that you let someone know, ‘You f**k with me and you’re gonna get it, you’re gonna get it, and so just think about that before you f**k with me, or you wreck me, or you run into me.’”

Hamlin later added: “And then there's the other half of me, the other birdie that’s like, ‘Yeah, that's an intentional wreck; you shouldn't be able to do that, that’s wrong.’

“So I don't know which one I like. I don't know if I like the self-policing birdie or I like the ‘that's an intentional wreck.’”

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