It is Monday and you know that means an all-new Actions Detrimental from Denny Hamlin. This week, he focused a lot on passing. Or, the lack of it. Martinsville in particular is a track that has historically seen lots of passes, and lots of cautions – none of that was there on Sunday.
Denny Hamlin believes he knows what has messed up the overall NASCAR product in recent years. He’s been in the sport at the Cup level for basically two decades. He’s been through a lot of cars.
Three things need to change. RPMs, horsepower, and tire fall off.
“I really wish we would consider it [changing RPMs and horsepower]. I know we keep talking about it and I guarantee you from the drivers’ perspective we will keep talking about this if this is the road we’re going to continue to go down,” Hamlin said on his podcast. “We’re really hurting our on-track product with this initiative to lower RPMs, lower horsepower. It’s just not good, in my opinion.”
Denny Hamlin also said as a driver-owner, he doesn’t see cost being an issue if you change the RPMs and horsepower. NASCAR claims that the lower HP allows teams to save money on engines. Hamlin doesn’t seem to believe that.
Goodyear Can Do It
Denny doesn’t want to just see tweaks to the engine, he is thinking bigger than that. He wants tires to fall off, and he knows it can be done. Just like with the engines, they’ve had tires fall off in the past. Why not now?
“I know Dale Jr. he’s on this [tire] train, right? Goodyear come on, give us a tire that will really start to fall off. It’s possible, I guarantee it’s possible. It’s just they [NASCAR] don’t want blowouts, they don’t want, whatever, right? But if you knew as a driver that you had to save your tire or it would blow out?”
There has to be a conscious decision made one way or another. Drivers are fine with adapting to whatever kind of racing NASCAR throws at them. However, it might hurt the bottom line in the long run.
Denny Hamlin Just Wants NASCAR to ‘Be Better’
In short, Hamlin just wants the racing to be better. He wants to be able to go from 10th to 1st in a matter of laps if the conditions are right. Fans likely want that, too. If drivers and viewers hadn’t seen the racing of the past, then NASCAR might be able to see this as great racing.
However, two years into the Next Gen car and it has been a very mixed bag of results. Hamlin just wants NASCAR to give them a chance.
“We can be better, we can do better. I’m confident, this isn’t lost, we just, we’re gonna have to make some real decisions, some big decisions and we’ve tried this path. It’s not helping us, let’s try something different.”
With single-source parts, any change to performance power is likely going to be a year or more away. Getting parts made to adapt to a new package takes a lot of time and Denny Hamlin acknowledged that in his podcast.
As of right now, it is a waiting game with NASCAR.