Denny Hamlin says NASCAR outlaw All Star Race would cost teams $2 million

As promised, veteran NASCAR driver and fifth-year Cup Series team owner Denny Hamlin went into detail over why his fellow team owners rejected the proposal to run the All-Star Race at North Wilkesboro next month under a lawless Run What Your Brung rules package.

It basically comes down to cost and what Hamlin says would be a $2 million investment just to have a chance to win $1 million while providing NASCAR R&D work that he says shouldn’t be incumbent on the teams in the first place.

The comments were made on his weekly ‘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 said ‘it was not a good idea’ for his three-car team and that it was supported by another three-car team that he reached out in contemplating the concept.

NASCAR’s proposal to the teams, as part of a broader industry wide effort to improve racing on short tracks with the fourth-year NextGen car, was to have a race where teams could bring whatever they wanted to the track as long as they used existing approved parts.

Hamlin said this would mean effectively removing a car from his fleet because it would no longer be usable for a race where the rules applied, therefore losing a car that he says costs $300,000 each.

"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."

Hamlin said he can't afford that loss, three cars overall for the 23XI Racing team he co-owns with Michael Jordan, just for one race to do NASCAR's R&D work for them. 

"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.”

Hamlin said the only teams with the CNC machines to even modify these parts are Hendrick, Gibbs and Penske, which means having to overload those organizations and the cost associated with doing all of that work too.

With that said, Hamlin would still be open to a more limited and targeted open rules race, if NASCAR just allowed teams to modify ride heights and body placement without modifying the single source supplied parts.

The biggest issue on short tracks is that the NextGen was built backwards, nose up and tail down so that air can be fed to the rear diffuser.   

“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.”

But as Hamlin points out, NASCAR designed this car and he believes its on them to spend to fix it on short tracks.

“Honestly, NASCAR needs to invest in getting better. Not us. We've already invested in this thing.”