More than a few times now, Denny Hamlin has given reason after reason after reason why NASCAR needs to make the racecars more powerful by adding more horsepower. Recently, Hamlin seconded the words of fellow driver Chase Elliott in once again raising the need for more power under the hood of the Next Gen cars.
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Speaking on Actions Detrimental, the Bristol race winner said, “What today proved is that we’ve complained about horsepower, horsepower, horsepower. The reason we want horsepower people is because it creates off-throttle time.”
Hamlin claimed adding more horsepower would give the good drivers a window to “manhandle their car”, change their lines, and become a bigger factor in the finish because adding more power would lead to more braking, more off-throttle time, more rolling time, and so on. He then cited Elliott’s words to add to his claim.
“I think Chase Elliott summed this up perfectly … Chase said, ‘We’ve all been forced to drive the same. We have no power so we drive in really deep. We slam on the brakes. Then we slam back on the gas. And since we don’t have any power, we have to run right around the bottom, and no one is able to venture anywhere else because that’s just the shortest distance,'” Hamlin described.
“And that’s the box we’ve been put in, is to just be all the same. If you create bigger horsepower, you wear the tires out. And when you wear the tires out, you see cars that are 2 seconds slower than the others.”
Why NASCAR won’t listen to Denny Hamlin about more horsepower
While drivers like Denny Hamlin and others have continued to demand for more power in their racecars, NASCAR made their stance pretty clear last year: They won’t increase the horsepower because that’s not the answer. Steve Phelps, the President of NASCAR, claimed this towards the end of 2023.
“I don’t think the answer is more horsepower because more horsepower is expensive,” Phelps said as per NBC Sports. “If you ask a driver what’s going to solve it, they’re always going to say ‘Give me more horsepower.’ It’s a thing. I’m not a driver, but I’ve listened to enough drivers, and that’s their solution. So the question is, is that really what it is? I don’t know.”
Now, it isn’t as if Phelps or NASCAR are really that clueless about what will better the racing product. Sure, they’ve ruled out more horsepower. But they have tried different ways, like tweaking the aero-package, or more recently, the tires and the resin which dramatically affected the racing in Bristol.
So for the more horsepower hopefuls, their hope would be if none of these experiments and tweaks end up working on a consistent level, who knows, maybe NASCAR would consider adding more power under the hood.
