NASCAR goes to the fourth Cup Series race of this season at Phoenix with a plethora of changes to its short track package from last year. However, Joe Gibbs Racing star Denny Hamlin isn’t appeased with them and wants the sanctioning body to incorporate one long-running ask from drivers and fans.
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Talking to the media ahead of Sunday’s race, Hamlin expressed the need for cars to have more horsepower in order to make racing more competitive. He believed that the current number renders all drivers to be on maximum gas most of the time and provides little space for them to overtake.
He said, “You have to get us out of the gas either through the tire or the horsepower. It’s that combination that makes passing so difficult. So the more you can get us out of the gas, which means if we have more horsepower we have to let off sooner, that gives the opportunity to overtake for the car that’s behind.”
While Denny Hamlin did acknowledge that a gain as little as 50 HP might not essentially be a game-changer, he was willing to welcome any increase from the current level of 550 HP. The clout surrounding horsepower is yet another omnipresent element in NASCAR’s list of soon-to-be-resolved issues.
Denny Hamlin’s continuous push for more horsepower and NASCAR’s promise of openness
Being the pressing person that he is, Hamlin has been at the tail of NASCAR, asking for more power for quite a while now. One key reason that makes his demands valid is that Cup Series cars had powers of up to 900 HP as recent as the 2014 season. However, with the introduction of the Next-Gen car, the numbers were brought considerably down.
While NASCAR reasons the reduction as a move to save costs, it has resulted in a bad short-track racing experience. Hamlin told Sportsnaut last year, “In a cost-cutting measure, we’ve continued to cut horsepower which has led to shifting and it’s led to less power and more grip on the short tracks, which has made the racing bad.”
He continued to mention that the promotion could spend millions on improving its aerodynamic package, but as long as the power under the hood wasn’t pushed up, there wasn’t going to be any difference. Responding to the driver’s words, executive Steve O’Donnell said during his 2023 Annual State of the Series address that NASCAR was “open to everything” to make short-track racing better.
Three races into the 2024 season, ‘everything’ hasn’t included more power in the cars yet. The upcoming race at Phoenix will paint a clearer picture of whether NASCAR is in the right or the wrong with its adamancy to not alter the horsepower.
