Denny Hamlin has shut down the idea that a late wreck prevented Brad Keselowski from winning the Daytona 500 just days after being medically cleared to race by NASCAR after an off-season leg injury.

One of Hamlin's 23XI Racing drivers, Riley Herbst, got into Keselowski late on the last lap when the No. 6 car has a run on the outside, wrecking them both, but Hamlin has backed his driver for going for a potential win and insisted that Keselowski wouldn't have caught winner Tyler Reddick anyway.

Speaking on the first Actions Detrimental podcast of the new season, Hamlin used his laptop to watch footage of the incident from different cameras, alongside handy data for driver speed and the like.

Keselowski called Herbst's move 'one of the dumbest things I've ever seen' after the race, later posting on Twitter: "If the #35 goes low and pushes the #45, we photo finish at the line for the win of the Daytona 500. It’s probably super close. Who knows, maybe we still all wreck… proud of our team to be in position, Disappointed we didn’t all get to find out."

Hamlin: Idea Keselowski could have won is a fairytale

Hamlin, meanwhile, said on his Monday podcast: "I mean, have you seen Riley's in-car? I'll bet he thought he was legitimately going to win the race. He had such a run, I think he would have been really really close to winning the race. At that time, Riley had essentially three decisions.

"He comes off Turn 4 and he's really close to the 45 (Reddick). 45 gets the run, and removes himself from the front of the 35 (Herbst) – he pulls down, goes to the inside of the 9 (Chase Elliott). Now Riley finds himself with the 9 on his hood pins, and he's like 'well I don't wanna push him!', and the run he's got is so big, 'lemme just go high! We'll go quick and have this three-wide finish at the line', which...I'm telling you, his run was so massive.

"He just barely hit the brake right before he pulled out of line. It was 100 pounds of pressure, but coming to the line Riley's coming really fast up to the 9 and instead of hitting him and probably then shooting him past the 45, he hits the brake to not hit him, says 'I don't wanna touch him, so I'm gonna go high', and that slowing of the momentum allowed the 6 (Keselowski) to get there.

"The 6 was not getting there. We're living in a fairytale land if people think the 6 was actually going to get all the way there, I don't think so."

Hamlin paused to lay out the numbers – estimating that Keselowski was about four car lengths back from Reddick with around 600ft to go, running 3.5-4mph faster – before saying he'd leave the calculations to somebody else.

"Going back to Riley," he said, "I think that he found himself essentially about to push the 9 right before the line, he hit the brake, and at that time he had a decision. He thought he was going to go for the lead, but I just think touching the brake before getting to the 9 slowed him up enough to where the 6 is on his outside, and again it's a game of inches and split-seconds and it didn't work."