Denny Hamlin said on Monday’s “Actions Detrimental” podcast that it would cost teams $2 million to take part in NASCAR‘s proposed “Run What You Brung” rules package for next month’s All-Star Racce at North Wilkesboro Speedway. Mike Forde, NASCAR managing director of racing communications, said on Wednesday’s “Hauler Talk” podcast that Hamlin’s estimation is incorrect.
“Denny talked about how this would potentially cost $2 million if we went ahead and did this. I think his math was off by about $2 million,” Forde said. “But actually, it could cost $0 or potentially save teams money, believe it or not. I’m sorry, Denny. But I did text with Denny, and I told him you can listen to the ‘Hauler Talk’ podcast on Wednesday for all the goods.”
Forde’s comments prompted a response from Hamlin. The 23XI Racing co-owner fired a shot at Forde.
“Oh it cost us nothing to run a race team now,” Hamlin tweeted. “Whew, this business is easier than I thought. BTW, Great stats on Sunday!”
NASCAR proposed the package to teams in an effort to help fix the short track racing product. In the Next Gen era, performance at historic tracks such as Martinsville and Bristol hasn’t been up to standard. But the teams rejected the proposal. Hamlin said it came down to money.
Denny Hamlin explains why teams rejected ‘Run What You Brung’ proposal
“We’ve been very transparent in the fact that this car cost $300,000,” Hamlin said. “Do the math real quick. If I put my three cars on the racetrack and just to build this wild, illegal car, I’m going to destroy it and now I lose one more car out of my fleet. I only get seven cars per door number. So, that’s three cars that are wiped out of my fleet that I’m not going to get a replacement for because I’m not going to get a replacement car if the car has damage to it if you wreck it. You have to show NASCAR that it’s wrecked, bent or whatever and you need another chassis. I can’t afford to lose that out of my rotation.
“We used to have 14 cars, now we’re down to seven. The whole cost-cutting thing was to shorten up how many cars we have in our stable. Can you ask for another chassis? Sure, but I’m gonna spend $1 million just on parts and pieces. We haven’t even developed anything yet. So, just in parts and pieces to replace all this sh*t we’re gonna modify, we’re gonna spend a sh*t ton of money. And it only pays $1 million to win. It’s paid $1 million to win for 30 years. It’s not that cool anymore. Even if one of my cars won, I don’t see this as even remotely breakeven proposition.”
Forde pushed back on Hamlin’s reasoning. He explained why “Run What You Brung” would have cost teams $0 or even saved them money.
“His reasoning and what he threw out there was that if the car cost $300,000, he has three cars, he would destroy every single part in that car trying to make it the best they can by modifying every part to its max ability,” Forde said. “So, $900,000 worth of parts that are now obsolete because they can’t be used anywhere else except the All-Star Race. Part two is they would be building parts, creating parts with their partners at Joe Gibbs Racing which would cost another $1 million. All put in, almost $2 million for this race that ‘only’ pays $1 million to the winner. That’s incorrect.
“What we presented to the teams is you cannot modify any parts, you cannot build new parts, you can’t create any new parts. Everything still had to be single-sourced. But there was a list of things we were going to allow teams to do.”
Forde continued, “If you didn’t want to do anything, if you didn’t want to come up with any idea, you can just build your cars, what you could have done is use body panels that aren’t race ready for a Talladega or a Coke 600, but probably too good for a show car and use it for the All-Star Race. So, you could have used sort of like hand-me-downs which they do now, but it’s hand-me-downs that’s not up to snuff for a points race, you could have used it there and actually save some money. The teams are not going to do that, but maybe a smaller team would.”
– Kendrick Perkins | First Take
