Denny Hamlin wants to increase speed to improve racing at the Daytona…

Denny Hamlin wants to increase speed to improve racing at the Daytona…

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. (AP) — Denny Hamlin has a plan for enhancing racing at Daytona International Speedway, and it includes going quicker.

He has already spoken to NASCAR executives about it, too.

Hamlin shared his thought for fixing the Daytona 500, which has turn out to be a fuel-mileage event since the debut of the Next Gen automotive in 2022, with everybody else after celebrating his first victory as a team proprietor in “The Great American Race.”

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“There’s a way, but we’re going to have to increase the speeds by a lot,” said Hamlin, who completed thirty first in the 500 on Sunday however made it to victory lane with Tyler Reddick at 23XI Racing. “You’re going to make it where handling matters. That’s going to spread the field, that’s going to make it to where … it’ll look a little more like racing from the past.”

The latest iteration of NASCAR’s inventory automotive is a safer version of something beforehand seen in the sequence. But it also delivers slower laps at superspeedways like Daytona and Talladega and leaves vehicles bunched up like never before.

“As long as (NASCAR’s) insurance company is OK with it, you’re going to have to speed up the cars because right now we’re so planted in the racetrack that we could just run in this really tight pack,” Hamlin said.

Hamlin met with NASCAR earlier this week and mentioned letting groups devise a racing package deal they might take a look at during the exhibition Clash if it returns to Daytona next yr. If it really works, the tweaks may probably be rolled out before 2028.

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“You won’t see any fuel saving,” Hamlin said. “You’re just going to see people hanging on. That would be the only fix.”

Reddick’s crew chief, Billy Scott, was less confident that the fuel-mileage strategy could be altered.

“I doubt there’s a fix to it because we’re just going to figure out the next way to exploit it, and I don’t know that it needs to be fixed,” Scott said. “It would be like asking if you need to change how chess is played.”

With the evolution of the Cup Series automotive creating little probability of manipulating elements and items, groups now rely more on making up spots on pit highway on race day. They put new tires on less often and take a look at to save gas by operating less-than-full throttle. The end result is a state of affairs that takes less time to fill fuel tanks during stops.

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But it also can create lulls in the early and center elements of race levels.

“On one hand, it’s good because our strategy worked out perfectly,” said 2023 Daytona 500 winner Ricky Stenhouse Jr., who completed second Sunday. “We stuck to it. It was brutal riding around there for a while. Not sure what the Toyotas were doing, but I think that made the race pretty boring there for a while for the fans. It was chaos after they pitted.”

Hamlin’s thought may work. It’s at least price contemplating.

“Everybody is trying to react off each other and figure out a way to get in the front at the right time, and that depends on whether cautions fly,” Scott said. “… To me, from where we stand, that’s a very enjoyable part of it.”

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AP auto racing: https://apnews.com/hub/auto-racing

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