In a wide-ranging Wednesday conversation on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio ‘The Morning Drive,’ Darlington Cup Series race winner Denny Hamlin explained why the fourth-year Cup Series car continues to be ‘hard to pass’ with.
Hamlin also once again implored NASCAR for at least a modest increase in horsepower to address it.
“It is different,” Hamlin said. “It is certainly more sensitive to being behind another car. That is certainly the consistent thing with it and Darlington is so narrow that you can’t escape the wake of that car in front of you.
“The normal mile-and-a-halfs … like Kansas and Charlotte, the track is wide enough that you can get a new lane (and) you can get as clean as air to try to complete a pass.
“But at Darlington, it’s the only one and a half, two lane mile-and-a-half (1.366) track we have. So there just isn’t room to get away from someone and when (we are) all running within a tenth of each other (and) it’s just going to be really hard to pass and you’re going to be relying on someone holding up the guy you’re trying to pass.
“It’s just part of the cycle that we’re in. The car drives good around the track. It just doesn’t like to have any other car on the track with it.”
The conversation with hosts Pete Pistone and Mike Bagley then turned to how Hamlin uses his podcast as a means to communicate with NASCAR itself. An example of that would be the state of the competition product with Hamlin dominating at Martinsville but then winning a race that William Byron dominated until he lost track position during green flag pit stops.
“You’re coming off a couple of races of domination and what I hear on my end is — the racing and how are we going to make it better,” Hamlin said of conversations within the garage. “No matter what we do, 20 years ago, we’re going to be talking about how to make the racing better. What we have to understand is that the parity is what is making it so hard to pass. It’s making it so hard to get near each other to crash which is what some fans are there to see, which is more action.
“It’s a tough problem and the fans I talk to see say they want more horsepower and I wish it was that easy.
“It is, technically, but it also isn’t right. Could we at least go back to the 750 horsepower, which is only 100 more than what we got now, which would at least be a step in the right direction to make it where … these cars are just so planted. I can’t tell you enough how much that’s the case, that they’re stuck to the race track. We have to unstick them somehow. Is it more horsepower, more tire fall off because I know we’re working towards that and Goodyear and NASCAR has made good progress there but it’s more about the competition side than anything. Late last year, it was the officiating, and it just goes in cycles where and what the focus is on.”
When Bagley asked Hamlin what is to stop any kind of horsepower increase, Hamlin said what he has said for years, which is nothing.
“The only thing I can do is tell you that when we had 900 horsepower, then 750 and now 650, the engine bills are the same,” Hamlin said. “I don’t know if the manufacturers are eating that cost. I don’t think so. I think they’ve been passing it along to the teams this whole time. The issue seems to be red tape, obviously.”
He is referring to the pursuit of new manufacturers to join Chevrolet, Ford and Toyota and what kind of engine they can build.
“We’ve heard NASCAR say another manufacturer is close, they’re close, and until that happens, why not give the people what they want and if a new one comes in and says ‘I can’t produce that, I need to produce lower’ then we can taper it back to 650,” Hamlin said. “Until then, I don’t see a reason in sacrificing a) what the people want and b) what the drivers want and that will help the fan sentiment because they feed off whatever the drivers say so it’s an easier fix than its made out to be.
“Yes, the engine manufacturers will have to tweak a few things but those, such as Doug Yates, say going back to 750 isn’t a big deal for us. He said they swap out the spacer, make some adjustments, and go race. We’ve still been racing two races on these engines for quite some time.
“I don’t see a reason to not go back to the 750 and try it. Please let’s go back to the 750 and let’s just try and see if it puts it back in the drivers’ hands.”
