Denny Hamlin has a plan for improving racing at Daytona International Speedway, and it involves going faster.
He has already spoken to NASCAR executives about it, too.
Hamlin shared his idea for fixing the Daytona 500, which has become a fuel-mileage event since the debut of the Next Gen car in 2022, with everyone else after celebrating his first victory as a team owner in “The Great American Race.”
“There’s a way, but we’re going to have to increase the speeds by a lot,” said Hamlin, who finished 31st in the 500 on Sunday but made it to victory lane with Tyler Reddick at 23XI Racing. “You’re going to make it where handling matters. That’s going to spread the field, that’s going to make it to where … it’ll look a little more like racing from the past.”
The latest iteration of NASCAR’s stock car is a safer version of anything previously seen in the series. But it also delivers slower laps at superspeedways like Daytona and Talladega and leaves cars bunched up like never before.
“As long as (NASCAR’s) insurance company is OK with it, you’re going to have to speed up the cars because right now we’re so planted in the racetrack that we could just run in this really tight pack,” Hamlin said.
— Associated Press —