For years, Denny Hamlin has been the loudest voice in the NASCAR garage pushing for more engine power. He campaigned relentlessly for it on his podcast, challenging NASCAR’s reasoning publicly. And he eventually got what he wanted: 750 horsepower for short tracks. At Daytona, though, Hamlin is singing a different tune entirely. The reason is simple. He wants something bigger.

“What we’re essentially trying to recreate is Atlanta at Daytona and Talladega,” Hamlin said on Inside the Race. “From the numbers that I’ve seen, it’s going to be roughly a 33% gain in the right direction. Now, any gain is going to be a gain.”

Atlanta produced the best race of the 2026 season. Cars diced through the field all race long, drivers made bold moves, and nobody saved fuel. Denny Hamlin wants that at Daytona, and to get it, he is backing a horsepower cut.

The current Daytona package runs a 7-inch rear spoiler and around 510 horsepower. For the Coke Zero Sugar 400 on August 29, both numbers are coming down significantly. The spoiler drops to 4 inches, the same height used at intermediate tracks. Horsepower falls to 465, achieved by shrinking the engine’s tapered spacer to 27/32 of an inch. Wide splitter stuffers are being added to the front, and new spoiler braces will support the smaller rear wing.

Here is why those two cuts go together. A smaller spoiler means less drag on the car, which then means the car naturally wants to go faster. To keep pack speeds safe, NASCAR pulls power back. The result is a car that slides through the air more cleanly, and that changes everything for the driver trying to make a pass.

Single-car qualifying speeds are projected to rise by 2 to 3 mph, while pack speeds stay roughly the same. But a trailing car with a 5-mph momentum run is now far more likely to actually complete the pass instead of getting swallowed by the lead car’s air wake.

Under the current rules, Daytona races follow a predictable pattern. The giant 7-inch spoiler creates so much drag that running flat-out offers no advantage. So drivers ride two-by-two at partial throttle, saving fuel, waiting. The entire field queues up in a line, and nobody moves until the final few laps. Denny Hamlin described the experience from inside the car.

“What happens for us is that we spend the entire race fuel mileage saving all for that last pit stop,” he said. “You come out 10th, you are log jammed, you’re not going anywhere.”

That is the opposite of Atlanta. At Atlanta, the cars are grip-limited, which naturally creates gaps between them. Drivers have to stay on the gas the whole race. Nobody can afford to save.

The new Daytona package tries to manufacture that same dynamic. Less drag means a driver can pull out of line, build a run, and actually go somewhere. Denny Hamlin put a number on the goal.

“So we’re trying to make it to where it allows the drivers to pull out of line when they get a run and then hopefully create a little bit of space between them to allow them to get back in line. And so it’s not going to make them so apprehensive to make that bold move with 30 to go,” he said.

No practice runs with this package before Daytona qualifying. If it works cleanly, Talladega gets the same rules in October.