In recent months, NASCAR has been caught in a firestorm. The antitrust lawsuit from 23XI Racing and Front Row Motorsports has pulled back the curtain on years of bad blood. Leaked text messages between top executives, including Steve Phelps, showed shocking disrespect towards the team owners and other series. One veteran owner is called a “bloody stupid redneck” and a “total bloody clown,” while other chats talk of wanting to “put a knife” in Tony Stewart and Denny Hamlin’s old SRX series.

What used to stay behind closed doors is now front-page news, and NASCAR is doing everything it can to control the story. Into that mess stepped Denny Hamlin with a post that basically said: stop lying to the fans.

Denny Hamlin goes nuclear on NASCAR

Denny Hamlin has clearly reached his limit. Right after ESPN dropped a long article that framed the 23XI and Front Row lawsuit as some kind of personal crusade, Hamlin jumped on X and tore it apart. He called the piece straight-up “propaganda” that NASCAR helped write to flip public opinion right before the December 1 trial. He even tagged Mike Forde, NASCAR’s managing director of communications, and told him to take a bow for co-authoring it.

“Please give credit to @mforde for helping you write this propaganda piece that they want pushed to switch the narrative,” Hamlin wrote on X.

“Continuous lies about our stance, NASCARs motives for its actions, and continued message from the sanctioning body that everything is fine. Our fans know better,” he added.

Hamlin wrote that the sport keeps repeating the same tired line that “everything is fine,” while the leaked texts, court filings, and years of complaints prove the opposite. He told fans they’re too smart to fall for it and can see the lies about the teams’ real reasons and NASCAR’s real motives.

The ESPN story had pointed out how Hamlin drives for Joe Gibbs Racing, co-owns 23XI with Michael Jordan, hosts one of the biggest podcasts in the sport, and still sits on NASCAR’s own playoff-format committee, almost like he’s too deep in the family to be suing it. Hamlin fired back that the lawsuit isn’t about burning the house down, it’s about fixing the foundation so everyone gets a fair shot.

With the trial literally days away, his post turned a quiet PR move into a public shouting match. The fight isn’t just happening in legal briefs anymore; it’s playing out on phones, TVs, and timelines in real time.

Denny Hamlin basically told the sanctioning body that their usual playbook of polished statements and friendly media pieces isn’t cutting it this time. The texts are out there, the complaints are public, and fans have eyes. Each day, more and more people don’t believe in NASCAR’s ‘everything is fine’ approach.

All the noise about leaked texts and propaganda pieces really just circles back to the complaint NASCAR has never truly solved: the same handful of super-teams win everything while everyone else fights for leftovers.

The bigger fight has always been about the same old problem

The Next Gen car rolled out in 2022, promising cheaper parts and closer competition so smaller teams could breathe. For a hot minute, Trackhouse looked like the new kid who could hang with the giants. Then Hendrick, Gibbs, and Penske hired more engineers, found the tiny edges nobody else could afford to chase, and pulled away again.

Bill Elliott saw this movie almost twenty years ago. In 2008, he looked at the win column and said it’s always the same armies taking the trophies. Smaller teams might steal a day in the sun, but year after year, the big budgets kick everybody else’s butt because they have the people and the money. He hated watching legendary names get run out of business because they couldn’t keep up with the arms race.

“You look at Hendrick or Roush or Gibbs or Childress. You look at the win column this year, and they all come from those kind of teams.”

Now, officials are floating the idea of loosening a few rules to bring back creativity. Sounds good on paper, but open the rule book, and the teams with the deepest pockets will just spend their way to another advantage.

The rich get richer, the little guys get tired, and the gap never closes. That’s the same unfairness 23XI and Front Row Motorsports are suing over, the same unfairness Hamlin is calling propaganda when NASCAR claims everything is fine.

From ugly executive texts to polished articles that land right before trial, to the same three teams winning week after week, the story stays the same: power protects power. Denny Hamlin just made sure the whole world heard it loud and clear.