Denny Hamlin is not one to shy away from speaking his mind and that’s exactly what he did during the Phoenix race. He shed light on one of NASCAR’s biggest issues-horsepower. The driver of the #11 car has his fair share of haters, but one thing that everyone has agreed upon is that the Next-Gen cars just do not have enough horsepower, especially considering their weight. Several people sided with Hamlin’s comments, including ‘Door Bumper Clear’ co-host and spotter Brett Griffin.

Speaking on a recent episode of the podcast, Griffin took critical digs at NASCAR for not improving that aspect of the car and citing teams’ money as the reason. That argument falls flat because of several reasons. One of the biggest ones is that team owners are willing to pay whatever extra price there is to pay for that. Denny Hamlin believes that a slight increase in horsepower would not even cost anything extra.

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It’s not just horsepower that plagues the Next-Gen. The seventh-generation stock car is the heaviest of the lot and while that does not cause many issues on superspeedways or intermediate tracks, it’s a menace to maneuver on short tracks due to the massive drag. Especially these days with air blocking seemingly the only defensive move that Cup Series racers seem to know of. On a short track with air blocking, one cannot even run directly behind the leader let alone pass them.

And NASCAR had initially thought of making it just 550 hp, which would have been, quite frankly, laughable. Thanks to drivers protesting, it was raised to 670 hp, but it still is not enough. Teams understand that and are more than willing to accommodate higher horsepower. So when the sport’s officials cited saving teams’ money as a reason for not doing it, Brett Griffin just could not hold his thoughts back as he invoked his inner Denny Hamlin.

“Denny said that you can make a phone call right now to Doug Yates and he can turn up the horsepower to 750 hp and not lose any durability. There’s a lot of conversation, I saw (Jeff) Gluck, some of his comments last night about, “they’re worried about saving the teams’ money.” F**k saving the teams’ money. Like I’m tired of hearing that. Fans don’t care how much money you save. That’s part of why we’re in this Next-Gen mess anyway, you trying to save the teams’ money,” he said.

Hamlin made a good point as per a report in Sportsnaut, stating that an increase in horsepower from 670 hp to 750 hp would not cost any additional money, and given how heavy and tough the cars are, they would be able to handle it. But NASCAR just does not seem to be on board.

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It makes one wonder why. Surely, Denny Hamlin knows what he is talking about. As the owner of a team, dealing with the costs of putting a Cup Series car together is not a foreign concept to the 43-year-old and he sounded pretty adamant about the whole extra horsepower requiring no additional cost bit. A jump of 90hp is not that much but it will certainly go a long way in improving short-track racing. Perhaps, more than the aero package NASCAR developed over the off-season.

Denny stated, “I think any horsepower I think you can add will make the racing better. It is hard to pass because we are all in the gas so much. You have to get us out of the gas whether through the tire or the horsepower. That combination is what makes passing so difficult. The more you can get us out of the gas, which means if we have more horsepower, we have to let off sooner, that gives us the opportunity to overtake the cars behind. 50 horsepower, while it may not be a game changer, any horsepower gain will be an advantage for passing,” 

“You just call up Doug Yates (at Ford) and TRD and say we are going to go back to our old 750 plate – it can be before next weekend, and they said it wouldn’t change any of our durability we have. It can be done with one phone call with no additional money,” the 43-year-old added.

The Joe Gibbs Racing star didn’t stop there. On a recent episode of his ‘Actions Detrimental’ podcast, Hamlin vented out his frustrations stating that the engine bills cost the same as they did back when NASCAR ran 900 hp cars. But why are they not even exploring the option of increasing just a little bit of horsepower? “Call Jim France and ask,’ because I don’t know, I don’t have the answers for that,” he quipped.

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