In the aftermath of the FireKeepers Casino 400, much has been made of Corey LaJoie‘s wreck, which was one of the scarier incidents on the NASCAR circuit this year.

After getting physical with Noah Gragson, LaJoie saw his car turn sideways on him and then go completely airborne.

He skidded down the track for hundreds of yards on his roof, then finally flipped back upright after careening into the infield wall and then the infield grass.

Denny Hamlin believes wind might have been a significant factor in the flip.

“It could. It could have. Because what happens is when the car turns sideways, right?” Hamlin explained on his Actions Detrimental podcast. “So he turned sideways and immediately as his car goes sideways he’s got 30 extra miles per hour. Say there’s a gust or a sustained wind, it makes his car believe that he’s going 30 miles per hour faster than it’s actually going.

“Because when he turns sideways and now the broadside is going up against a 30 mile-an-hour headwind he’s already got a certain amount of wind that is coming, even if it was still, because of the speed. Add in 30 miles an hour of wind hitting the side of his car, probably just pushed it right over.”

Hamlin himself felt the effects of the wind on the track, explaining exactly where he could tell things were a little different and where Corey LaJoie might have been caught unaware.

“Turns 3 and 4, it was sketchy,” Hamlin said. “Sketch, sketchy. Because the wind was coming from north, northwest, which is kind of pushing your car loose on that side of the track anyway. But it was a lot gustier, lot more sustained winds today, which is why we saw Turns 3 and 4 be so sketchy.”

Corey LaJoie’s flip came around that area, lending further credence to Hamlin’s assertion.

“It’s kind of a transition point,” Hamlin said of the wind. “So when you go into Turn 3 you’ve got a headwind, as you start making the corner it just constantly frees you up. It pushes the front down and the back end swings out because of you’re changing directions then going with the wind.

“It was coming from like, say there’s a middle point of Turns 3 and 4, it’s like the 50% mark of between that. It was coming from that way. It just, it changes it and certainly changed the characteristics of the car.”

The good news is that Corey LaJoie is feeling all right, he confirmed on Tuesday. Welcomed news after a scary flip.