It’s not the first time Denny Hamlin has said so but he once again reiterated on his Actions Detrimental podcast that the current NASCAR Cup Series car suffers from a design flaw that continues to negatively affect the way it races.
This comes after a generally uneventful race at Bristol Motor Speedway on Sunday where Kyle Larson led 411 of 500 laps en route to his second win of the season.
He took exception to the current nature of spec racing, meaning a car in which every team has to use identically produced single source supplied parts, while also objecting to how NASCAR designed that platform.
A snapshot of his most notable quotes have been transcribed below:
“You’re not going to pass when the field runs the same speed. So again, and I’ve said this week after week, I don’t know what we expect. This is the car we built. This is what ownership of of NASCAR wanted. They wanted to build a sports car and we’re going to race this sports car on all these different tracks and it just doesn’t race well. I mean, I think there are fixes we can do to it but I’m not in charge. I’m part of NASCAR meetings and there’s been no discussion (about) fixing the things that really need to be addressed. …
“It’s just the platform in which we run, where the back is squashed down to the ground (and) the front is a foot in the air (so) of course it’s bad in traffic. We have a front end that not on the ground and it’s in the air because we have to feed the underbody air and as soon as we get behind somebody, that thing just lifts right up on you and you got no front downforce and it plows.
“So you got to get the attitude of the car correct … we got to get more overbody (and) less underbody because that’s what the Xfinity car has.”
Hamlin went on to say, as he has said before, that the Xfinity Series platform produces better racing because the trailing car can unsettle a leading car where the NextGen allows drivers to just air block a trailing car.
He did say he believes this car can be fixed, and can do so without changing any of the parts and pieces but it will cost teams digital development time and aerodynamic maps.
Hamlin took exception to the underbody, which is incredibly expensive, and how NASCAR mandates shock links to keep the cars from dragging the underbody, which also hurts the racing product.
Ultimately, Hamlin believes NASCAR is getting the product it wants in the mirage of passing.
“I think Clint Bowyer made a great point in that the engine used to wear out the tires back in the day but we we went down this road … Again this was a directive from NASCAR that we want to reduce horsepower. We want to tighten the field. We want it to look like you can pass (and) not necessarily pass. We just want it to look good when on the TV screen.
“And that direction has put us in this box now where we all are the same. And no one can pass a soul. It’s up to them if they want to fix it or not (or) to do something or not. But you know, from the fan sentiment that I’m seeing, it’s not good. And so I worry about that.”
Hamlin also told a story that he’s told on this show several times about how NASCAR’s John Probst insistent the NextGen was ready for its 2022 debut and it was not.
“The very first team owner meeting that I was ever in. … I said, ‘Mr. Probst, are you sure that we have this car ready to race at all types of different racetracks? We’ve got a blank canvas here that we have an opportunity to build a car that can be great at all tracks. Are we sure we’ve got it right?’ I said, ‘Okay, I believe you, I have no reason not to.’”
“They just didn’t do enough testing. The car wasn’t ready. We had to delay it one year, we had the COVID thing — it was not thought out enough. … We didn’t have multiple racecars on the racetrack testing this car until two months before the very first race. And at that moment is when we all realized holy shit, you cannot pass. It was really, really bad.
“Now, we did some things. We were going to run 500 horsepower. That was the original plan is to run 500 horsepower in this thing. But it was so horrible that we got them talked into 670.”
