October 1, 2022 | By Lee Spencer

Denny Hamlin calls for a complete redesign of the Next Gen car

Denny Hamlin has called for NASCAR to restart the Next Gen car from scratch.

The driver/owner doesn’t believe there’s an easy fix to alleviate the issues from impact occurring when drivers hit the wall—or each other--with the latest iteration of the Cup car.

Hamlin has experienced the brunt of the consequences of the new car, both literally and figuratively. In addition to feeling the pain of hitting the wall himself, the co-owner of 23XI Racing has had to operate the No. 45 team without driver Kurt Busch since the Cup champion was sidelined with concussion-like symptoms after a qualifying wreck 10 weeks ago at Pocono Raceway.

After entering Talladega Superspeedway this weekend with another NASCAR Cup star—Alex Bowman—on the sidelines due to a head injury—Hamlin and other drivers aren't holding back.

“The car needs to be redesigned; it needs a full redesign,” Hamlin said. “It can still be called Next Gen, but it needs to be redesigned everywhere—front, middle, rear, competition. The whole thing needs to be redesigned. We’ve got a Martinsville race coming up and it’s going to be tough. This thing is going to be exposed about how bad the race is and that’s just part of it.

“Competition, safety, we’d like to have it all better. But certainly, we just took a step back in safety and competition this year.”

Hamlin said the catalyst for creating the new car was to save cost for the teams. Although he acknowledges that a full redesign might not be realistic, Hamlin said testing improvements to the car should have been ongoing. 

Hamlin basically described the development of the new vehicle used at NASCAR’s highest level of racing a rush job. According to Hamlin, drivers expressed their concerns throughout the evolution of the Next Gen project but they were dismissed.

“We brought up these concerns with NASCAR last winter,” Hamlin said. “We actually as drivers, we didn’t do the docu-series last year because we didn’t feel comfortable with this Next Gen car and the lack of safety testing that had been done before they started announcing that we were going to run it. 

“We threw up red flags over a year ago and they just didn’t respond. They kept pushing that this car needs to be on track at all costs.”

NASCAR has scheduled a test for next week at an Ohio test facility to work on the car. The concentration will focus on the rear clip and bumper. But with five weeks remaining in the season, driver/owner Brad Keselowski doesn’t believe it’s realistic to anticipate a solution this year.

“Just the way the teams rotate the cars, they’re usually three to four weeks ahead,” Keselowski said. “So I don’t see us having anything different before the year is over. I think we need to be working right now to have something for Daytona.

“I think there is some sensible work being done. You have to keep in mind that when this car was built it was a bit of a pandemic baby. There was a lot of simulation work done and all those things, but there wasn’t a lot of real-world crash testing simply because you couldn’t do those things. I think in the sense of it being a pandemic baby, we’re going through some of those hurdles right now to work through those challenges.”

While NASCAR crash-tested the car in the offseason last winter at Talladega, Keselowski described the exercise as “one impact” and not representative of Bowman or Busch’s wrecks. Hamlin is encouraged by the upcoming test but called it “negligent” that NASCAR waited so long last year to crash test the car before putting drivers behind the wheel this year.

Certainly, Hamlin and Kevin Harvick have been the most vocal drivers when it comes to the shortcomings of the new car. Hamlin is part of the Drivers’ Advisory Council and receives complaints and concerns from his fellow drivers to pass on to the sanctioning body. The drivers held a video conference yesterday but many still rely on the veterans to amplify the message. 

“We can’t do it alone,” Hamlin said. “The other guys will bitch and moan to us but they need to have their voice heard as well. They’re going to be in this sport a long time and once Kevin and I are gone, someone is going to have to step up and be the voice of reason and call things as they are.

“I know a lot of these guys are just happy to be here but they ain’t going to be happy to be here when their brains are scrambled for the rest of their lives.”

Hamlin agrees with Harvick that more teams needed to be involved in the redesign of the car. Richard Childress Racing was tasked with the lion’s share of the project in the early stages. 

“Teams obviously have the best employees, the best engineers,” Hamlin said. “NASCAR has a very, very small workforce when it comes to competition. It doesn’t hold a candle to what these teams are capable of but the teams, I feel like, we could react quicker. Many race teams put up money to design the car and build the car. But NASCAR didn’t want any of the teams to be involved in it—for a competitive edge. But that’s why you go through tech. 

“In the end, our products are better than what we’re getting…we’re in a box where we can’t change anything.”