NASCAR’s In-Season Tournament Has One Big Issue According to Denny Hamlin

Starting from the 2025 season, the NASCAR Cup Series drivers will be able to take part in an in-season tournament that will have a million dollars for the winner to take home. It’s a brainchild of Denny Hamlin who planned something similar last year with some of the drivers. Now, NASCAR has just borrowed the idea and made it official. Meanwhile, the Joe Gibbs Racing star has one concern involving the financials.

As per the rules set by NASCAR, only the winner of the competition will receive the sum of $ 1 million. The rest? Well, they have to go home empty-handed and that’s what Hamlin has a bit of a problem with. Motorsports is expensive and the smallest financial assistance can go a long way in aiding a team or a driver. In that respect, the 43-year-old believes that there should be more financial incentives that would motivate the smaller teams to do well.

“I think there still should be a million to the winner. But I think that there should be an additional million spread out to the race team in the sense of like if you qualify it’s, I don’t know, $20,000 or something. Each round you advance, I think the team, or driver, whatever you want to say, gets money for advancing,” he said on a recent episode of the Actions Detrimental podcast.

Aside from this point, Hamlin is eagerly waiting for the in-season tournament to start and from what he’s heard, it’s all positive for NASCAR’s latest venture.

In-season tournament idea has received positive feedback from fans, insiders

It’s no surprise that the JGR star is taking a keen interest in the tournament. After all, it was initially his idea to make this happen. All NASCAR has done is that they made it an official event and set a huge prize money for the winner.

“I think it certainly has got all positives. I don’t think of anything negative that can go along with it. Certainly, you’re gonna have some storylines… We know this thing is gonna come down to someone at the very end of the race battling for an irrelevant position, what we think is an irrelevant position, but it will move someone on so I think that’s all positives,” the 43-year-old had said.

It definitely will reinvigorate fans’ interest in the regular season which is a much-needed development, especially considering the consistent decline in viewership in the recent past.