Hamlin hits out at key NASCAR PROBLEM affecting racing

NASCAR veteran Denny Hamlin has pointed to a 'physics' problem he believes to be negatively impact racing in the Cup Series.

Hamlin has never won the championship, but has reached the play-off stage in each season since debuting full-time in 2006, excluding his injury-affected 2013 campaign.

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He will compete in that section of the season for the 18th time in 2024, but has indicated he would like to see some issues addressed in the near future.

On the Actions Detrimental podcast, the 43-year-old explained the problems plaguing racing in the series.

Why is it difficult to overtake in NASCAR?

Comparing NASCAR's two most high-profile competitions, Hamlin delved into the issues affecting racing.

“That is the big difference between XFINITY and Cup, is that Cup, the closer you get to them, your car takes off,” he said.

“You lose all downforce. It’s done. The closer you get to the car in front of you in XFINITY, and what we saw Riley Herbst and many others do is that as soon as you get close to the rear of the car, they start losing rear downforce, and then they get off the bottom and they shuck them.

“And that’s what we used to do with the Gen 4 car and 5 car, is that we could always get the guy in front of us loose. Now you can’t do that because they are not making any over-body aerodynamics, and it’s all under body."

NASCAR currently runs the Next Gen (Gen 7) car, and has not raced Gen 5 since 2012.

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"You’re not able to take air off their spoiler, because there’s not hardly any air going on the spoiler in the first place. We got a physics problem," Hamlin asserted.

"I wish they would just let us come up with our own package for that track just one time, and let us decide what we’re gonna run.”

“Chris [Gabehart, Hamlin's crew chief] kept telling me, you know, it’s really, really close,” Hamlin said of mid-race radio call.

“We’re kind of right there. And so I don’t know, yes, certainly when I knew if he was going to have to ask me to pass anyone in that final stage. It was just not going to happen. It’s just physics."

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