Following the recent Indy Cup Series at the Brickyard 400, NASCAR driver Denny Hamlin expressed significant annoyance with the current style of racing, specifically critiquing the fact that drivers have to worry about their fuel levels. According to him, this detracts from the real racing as drivers are forced to slow down to conserve their fuel. Hamlin, who spoke on the Actions Detrimental Podcast, shared his frustrations about having to conserve fuel instead of racing at full throttle.
“I’m so tired of running fuel mileage races where we’re all running half-throttle,” Hamlin lamented during the podcast. “I wish we could do something about it, but it’s like, I don’t know, it helps you sometimes, it hurts you sometimes. I just think for the racing’s sake, man do we really want NBC to have to sit here and explain all these different things and fuel?”
He continued:
“Don’t you want to see us out there racing and you know that… ‘hey that car out front, he got to the lead because he’s the fastest car’ or whatever?” He also pointed out the odd focus during telecasts: “He’s like no, don’t even look at this guy, look at the guy back in 12th. That’s the guy you should be paying attention to.”
Additionally, Hamlin’s race at the Brickyard was marked by his strong early performance, winning the first stage and securing a third-place finish in Stage 2, but a crash in the third stage led to a disappointing 32nd place finish. This incident, however, paled in comparison to the controversy surrounding the race’s final stages involving Ryan Blaney and eventual race winner Kyle Larson.
“This is one where you gotta give Blaney a bye on this one because he goes from controlling the race to not only not controlling the race… when the 6 pulls off to then relinquishing the spot that he had,” Hamlin explained. “He goes from second to still second and now we got a new player in the game. It was very unfortunate for the 12 that the 5 got the inside lane there. I mean what do you do about it? I’m not sure. I think that the 6 could have not pulled off in a more worse time. I don’t know how the 6 thought they were gonna make it anyway.”
Hamlin criticized how these fuel strategies impact the competition. “If we didn’t have these stupid fu*king fuel mileage races, we wouldn’t have this problem,” he argued.
Would you prefer to have an extra layer of strategy through refuelling, or would you prefer drivers to be pushing consistently throughout the entire race? I’m interested to know your thoughts.
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
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