Joe Gibbs Racing driver and co-owner of 23XI Racing Denny Hamlin has criticised NASCAR for not increasing the horsepower of the Next Gen car despite a strong calling for this from fans. The 44-year-old claimed the car "wasn't ready."
While speaking on his podcast, Actions Detrimental, Hamlin fumed about the Next Gen cars, which were introduced to the sport in 2022.
“The issue seems to be red tape, obviously,” the driver admitted. “We've heard that NASCAR says, ‘Well, another manufacturer. They're close. They're close.’ Until that happens, I just think why not give the people what they want? And then if a new one comes in and says, ‘Hey, I can't produce that. I need to produce lower.’ Then let's taper it back to 650.
“But until then, I don't see the reason in sacrificing A, what the people want, B, it's what the drivers want. And that will help the fan sentiment alone because the fans feed off of whatever the drivers say.”
In a separate episode of the podcast, Hamlin argued that the stock car racing series needed to do more testing. He added:
“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 sh*t, you cannot pass. It was really, really bad.
Denny Hamlin, Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota; Christopher Bell, Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota; Ty Gibbs, Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota; Carson Hocevar, Spire Motorsports Chevrolet
Photo by: Sean Gardner / Getty Images
“We can fix this car. The teams can fix this car,” he said. “We just got to get with the drivers, get in a room and figure out what do you fight? Why can’t you pass? And then come up with some remedies of how we can change this.”
The Joe Gibbs Racing driver recently celebrated two consecutive race wins in Martinsville and Darlington. However, Hamlin wasn't able to make it three in a row in Bristol after Kyle Larson snatched the victory from him.
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