“Those Days Are Done” – Denny Hamlin Offers a Dale Earnhardt Reality Check, In an Attempt to Save “Best Form of Racing”

In his recent Actions Detrimental podcast, Denny Hamlin reflected on the state of NASCAR racing. To be specific, he talked about the quality of racing at superspeedways. Hamlin is of the opinion that driver skill is no longer required to win at such race tracks. As a matter of fact, he went off on a bit of a small rant about it and acknowledged that older races were far better.

He told his podcast, “I don’t want that to get lost. We’ve really got to work on the superspeedways. With no three-wide racing anymore, that’s tough. The skillset that it takes to be going on superspeedways now, it’s null. I just sit in a pack and I know that I’m not allowed to get out of line. Have to just stay in line. The Dale Earnhardt days of going from 18th to 1st at Talladega. We keep playing those replays on social media, those days are done unless we change the aerodynamic package. It takes time. We went through a lot of changes in the off-season.”

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Denny Hamlin acknowledged some of the positives

The #11 driver observed that in the off-season there was a massive rules overhaul. He noted that most of it was in the name of safety, and it was something that he and his contemporaries appreciated. However, Hamlin insisted that the officials should also look into trying to improve the standard of racing in the Cup Series.

He continued, “I’m on a rant. Let me go. We went through a lot of changes in the off-season. Had to take all of our chassis and send them away to get better for safety. That’s great, cause safety first. Now we’ve got to start work on the racing product and I think that the sanctioning body is willing to make changes. They want to see us put on a great race. That has been our call, what we’ve been about for decades. You don’t see closer racing than you do in NASCAR. Don’t see contact like you do in NASCAR. It’s the best form of racing out there.”

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The Joe Gibbs Racing driver looked ahead to the future.

Fortunately, it is not all doom and gloom for NASCAR. He was confident that things would improve in the future. However, the driver has urged patience because change does not happen overnight. All that he hopes for is that the drivers and fans do not set too high expectations or they will be disappointed.

Hamlin concluded, “There is optimism for the future. Is it going to be for Martinsville coming up? Probably not. We’ll still be shifting, probably. Is it one lane? yes. Let’s temper our expectations, let’s just not throw everyone under the bus right now. This package is better, no question. It is more in the drivers’ hands, but the passing is still difficult.”

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For now, he will be looking ahead to the ongoing 2023 Cup Series campaign. So far, a race win has eluded him, but the season is long and anything can happen. The big question is, can Hamlin get the monkey off his back and reach Victory Lane?