Denny Hamlin has opened the Chase for the Championship with finishes of 18th and 9th but remains the points leader primarily because of the 16 stage points he earned at Darlington Raceway two weeks ago.
Naturally, there is a subset of the NASCAR fan base that believes Hamlin should have been punished for those results. They claim tradition and purity, an emphasis on race results over where a driver ran throughout the entire race, and at two arbitrary parts of the Southern 500.
