With practice comes mastery, right? NASCAR officials would not agree with this famous quote. But they do have valid reasons to back up their side of the argument. Back in 2020, when COVID-19 plagued the world, NASCAR removed practice sessions while trying to keep the sport in business somehow. 

Even after the pandemic dwindled, NASCAR kept minimal practice sessions promoting cost-saving among racing teams. However, this decision spurred a flurry of reactions among racers, who continue the debate to this day. Brad Keselowski thinks this decision has no point, but his JGR rival Denny Hamlin differs.

Denny Hamlin calls out RFK owner’s misplaced logic

Presently, NASCAR allows for a 20-minute practice session for most races in 2024, as opposed to 50 minutes in the past. Racers have argued that the extra time would let mechanics fine-tune cars before races, and so much more. Kevin Harvick had taken the middle ground, advocating for a two-day schedule.

Roush-Fenway Keselowski co-owner Brad Keselowski is also fixed in his opinion, as he has observed no economic benefits. He recently told the media, “I haven’t seen how we’ve saved any money getting rid of practice, not from a team perspective. Maybe there were some savings in other ways in the industry that I’m not aware of, but there haven’t been significant cost savings”.

Denny Hamlin invalidated Keselowski’s take entirely, saying, “I heard Brad, and it bugs me a little bit, ‘all we need is more practice, it’s not gonna cost anyone’. That’s not true. Then Hamlin added a 9-word accusation, saying Brad is “someone who has never made a cash call before.” He further said, “You have to buy quite a bit more. You have to come to the race track earlier, and that’s an extra night of hotel rooms.”

Denny Hamlin used his team’s example to drive the message home. “23XI would be more than happy to go back to practice and qualify if we just got our damn expenses covered…So you would have an hour of practice but the engine builders would say, ‘okay, the way they’re built, you can only run’em on these 20-minute practices in these two races. Beyond that, we gotta redo our engines. I can’t have you running a 100 laps at Kansas.’ So we would see costs. I think its not factual to say that adding practice and qualifying in a full weekend like we used to have would not incur costs.”

Yet Keselowski may not be too far removed from a ‘cash call’ ability.

Simulation eats up all the cost-saving tactics

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Brad Keselowski is going through a nearly three-year winless drought. His last Cup win came at Talladega Superspeedway in April 2021, and ironically he looks to Joe Gibbs Racing for inspiration. In line with Keselowski’s concerns, JGR driver Ty Gibbs said that simulators fall short of the actual practice on the tracks. Blowing Denny Hamlin’s argument, Keselowski has earlier also quipped along similar lines, observing that simulation is no less expensive.

“We put a lot of money and time into race car simulation. Whether that’s simulating the car statically with how it would perform aerodynamically in consideration to other things or whether its kind of a multi-body physics model, which is simulating the car going around the track.”

He also added, “I feel like it’s never a good idea for our sport when in cost consideration mode, move spending away from things that our spectators can enjoy and view or media can cover or discuss and move into areas that they cannot. I think if you look at the allocation of resources, that is what happened.”

NASCAR has a lot of demands on its plate already such as increasing horsepower and fixing broadcast issues. So it does not seem like longer practice sessions will turn into reality soon. 

Read More: “More Ls Than Ws” – Denny Hamlin Brings the Receipts on SMI’s Years of Incompetence and Failures