Hamlin: Drivers Council support of Tony Stewart "not about lug nuts"

“I think it just showed the unity amongst us. It has nothing to do with lug nuts, or no lug nuts, or anything like that,” Hamlin said Friday at Richmond (Va.) International Raceway.

“It was more about drivers believing they have a right to express their opinion when asked about it in an interview. We try to do our best to give honest answers and sometimes those aren’t always the best thing.

“I know I’ve been guilty of being too honest at times or too opinionated at times and it costs you a nickel or two. We just thought there should be some leniency there for someone who knows a lot about our sport and been in our sport a long time.”

The penalty

Earlier Thursday, NASCAR fined Stewart $35,000 – ironically on the same day he announced he was returning to competition from a back injury – for remarks it considered disparaging in an interview with several reporters on Wednesday.

During an event for sponsor Mobil 1, Stewart slammed NASCAR officials for allowing teams to “play games with safety to win races.”

“I guarantee you that envelope is going to keep getting pushed until somebody gets hurt,” Stewart said. “And you will not have heard a rant that’s going to be as bad as what comes out of my mouth if a driver gets hurt because of a loose wheel that hurts one of them.”

Thursday night, Hamlin – one of nine members of the drivers council – provided a statement to NBC Sports, in which the council offered support of Stewart and its members agreed to share the cost of his fine.

Did Stewart really cross a line?

Hamlin said he didn’t know where the line was that Stewart apparently crossed in his comments.

“We just believe that you should be able to express  your opinion unless you’re just terribly trashing the sport itself and things like that,” he said. “I think every situation is different but we’ll just move forward from it.”

Hamlin said he had heard no response from NASCAR officials regarding the council’s statement of support.

When asked about the role of the drivers council and if it had changed, Hamlin said, “I think that the drivers’ interests, the owners’ interests and NASCAR’s interests are 95 percent aligned most of the time. There are some things that we would like to see changed and sometimes that doesn’t align with what NASCAR thinks or the teams think.

“I think this was a pretty black-and-white thing from the drivers’ perspective to have a guy who’s coming back, he’s being interviewed, he responds to the question and he got fined for it.

“For us, I think it shows solidarity – we’re all in this together. We want to have one because that one voice will be a little bit louder and clearer when we go into meetings about where this sport is going to head from competition to safety.”