Denny Hamlin had a good day at North Wilkesboro. Starting seventh, he led laps early on, finished second in Stage 2, and chased down Joey Logano through heavy traffic at the end.

He crossed the line 0.859 seconds back, clinched his 2026 playoff spot, and stretched his points lead past 60. For a 45-year-old in his 21st full season, it was another strong afternoon. Then Jordan Bianchi published his radio audio on X.

“Have I mentioned this race is way too f***ng long?”

North Wilkesboro is a 0.625-mile short track. The race finished in 2 hours, 50 minutes, and 54 seconds. Under three hours.

Earlier this season, after winning at Nashville Superspeedway, Denny Hamlin went on his Actions Detrimental podcast and said that four hours of racing is too long. He pushed to cut NASCAR‘s Nashville from 400 miles to 300. He argued that slower intermediate tracks drag out race time, and stage breaks eat up too much broadcast time on top of it.

“Somehow, when you’re looking at the length of the races, the math doesn’t math to me,” he said. “It’s that, you’re running the same lap times, while the mileage might be the same … well, if you’re running a slower pace, it takes you longer to get to that 400 miles. So, on a normal mile-and-a-half that we run a 400-mile race, like at Michigan this weekend, that race will be two-thirds of the time that this one takes, because we’re running so much faster.”

Denny Hamlin co-owns 23XI Racing alongside Michael Jordan. Shorter races mean lower costs, less fuel, fewer parts, and less labor per event. That leads fans to question whether this is really about improving the fan experience or protecting the balance sheet.

Fans Were Not Sympathetic to Denny Hamlin’s Radio Whining

“Then retire old man,” one person replied directly to Hamlin on social media.

Hamlin is now the oldest active full-time Cup driver on the grid, a distinction he inherited when Martin Truex Jr. retired after 2024. He has been racing full-time since 2006.

Someone else pitched in with “Oh no, I get paid millions of dollars to drive, whatever shall I do?”

“One of MANY reasons everybody hates Dennis POS Hamlin. Always crying about how long races are. STFU Dennis,” another user commented.

The frustration was not just about one radio clip. There’s a pattern here.

The complaints go back further than Nashville. A few years ago, Denny Hamlin questioned the distance of the Coca-Cola 600. According to him, since Next Gen cars rarely blow engines anymore, the extra 100 miles, along with the standard 500, served no real purpose apart from pushing the finish past midnight.

Fans had a ready answer: 2022. That year, the 600 went into double overtime and became the longest race in NASCAR history at 619.5 miles. It was chaotic, unpredictable, and widely considered one of the most entertaining events in years. Denny Hamlin won that one, too.

And so, making a note of that, someone wrote, “Always crying about how long races are, even tried to say the 600 should be shortened a few years ago.”

In today’s race, Denny finished second, and yet, “Horses–t. He’s just being a big baby,” one fan wrote.

When you have spent two decades in the sport and radio complaining about a race that was under three hours, the fans who bought the tickets and made the trip are going to have something to say back. And they did.