Denny Hamlin says Cup Series teams rejected NASCAR’s proposal to run the All-Star Race under ‘run what you brung’ rules because it would be too expensive.
The concept was that teams could do whatever to their cars for the annual non-points exhibition race at North Wilkesboro Speedway as long as all the components were approved single-source supplied parts.
The comments were made on his Actions Detrimental podcast.
“Generally speaking, if you’re just talking to me, the race car driver and the fan, I’m going to say, I wish we had this, this would be fantastic,” Hamlin said. “There could be possibly something that gets learned for the short track package that could make it better.
“You know, the thought of having cars that are different speeds than each other is fantastic. That means passing will be more plentiful. There are of positives that could come from that but who is going to pay for it?”
Hamlin says this would be a $2 million investment from teams just to run a race that is a de facto test session for NASCAR to solve the performance woes for the NextGen car on short tracks.
“So what we’re going to do is destroy every piece and part of that car and make it lighter or something,” Hamlin said. “Like we’re going to modify it. We’re going to bend the chassis — we’re going to do all types of things to this thing that will make it illegal at any other racetrack that we go to.”
That means writing off the cars so they never can be used again, and remember that each car costs $300,000.
“So yeah, can you ask for another chassis? Sure,” Hamlin said. “But I’m going to spend a million dollars just in parts and pieces that we haven’t even developed anything (for) yet. So just in parts and pieces to replace all this that we’re going to modify, we’re going to spend a ton of money and it only pays 1 million to win.
“It’s paid $1 million to win for 30 years. For 30 years. It’s not that cool anymore. Like it, even if one of my cars won, I don’t see this as even remotely a break-even proposition.”
With that said, Hamlin still likes a race where there are less rules, instead proposing NASCAR run a race where teams are allowed to adjust ride heights, spoiler angle and body hanging positions wherever they want.
“So maybe we say, ‘Hey, you can run whatever spoiler, whatever, you can run the car at whatever ride height you want,’” Hamlin suggested. “So if you want to put the back end a foot up in the air, go right ahead.
“Like, those are easy enough things. I mean, it’s not easy. I don’t work in the shop but it’s things like that that you could do that would make the cars look different, run different and maybe you learn something for the NextGen going forward but it’s a project.”
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