{"id":120179,"date":"2025-08-05T06:26:12","date_gmt":"2025-08-05T06:26:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/120179\/"},"modified":"2025-08-05T06:26:12","modified_gmt":"2025-08-05T06:26:12","slug":"denny-hamlin-takes-strong-stance-on-problem-nascar-has-to-fix-after-iowa-drives-me-crazy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/120179\/","title":{"rendered":"Denny Hamlin takes strong stance on problem NASCAR has to fix after Iowa: ‘Drives me crazy’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reactions to the NASCAR<\/strong><\/a> Cup Series race at Iowa on Sunday were mixed. It was a compelling enough race, but there wasn\u2019t a whole lot of actual activity toward the lead in the closing third of the race.<\/p>\n

Part of that has to do with the tires, Denny Hamlin<\/strong> explained. He wasn\u2019t a fan of the compound used for the track at Iowa.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the yo-yo effect you see at Martinsville. No one can pass,\u201d Hamlin said on the Actions Detrimental<\/a> Podcast. \u201cYou can\u2019t pass the 30th-place car. That is the problem we\u2019re talking about and that is what we have to fix. It\u2019s that the leader looks like superman because he can run half throttle and just hold everyone off. Chase Briscoe<\/strong> at Pocono.\u201d<\/p>\n

Because the tires had very little fall-off, there wasn\u2019t much passing. Strategy came down more to fuel than anything else. And because there were so many cautions early in the third stage, everyone in the front of the pack ended up being fine on fuel.<\/p>\n

It led to a ho-hum win for William Byron<\/strong>, who sits atop the NASCAR leaderboard once more. Hamlin, meanwhile, was very irked at the tire setup.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you can do it at a short track, that should be like the eye-opener,\u201d he said. \u201cOK, we\u2019ve really got to fix this. Goodyear\u2019s really done a good job all year long of trying to implement softer and softer tires. It\u2019s just this one, I don\u2019t know how they got where they got on this tire. And I\u2019m sure there was a reason for it. But when you look at the lap times and it was just a flat ass, level, no drop-off in 50 laps. It\u2019s like I don\u2019t know what we expect.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat means the tire is so hard that it just takes dramatic amount of downforce to push that tire into the racetrack and get it to grip. Nobody but the first few cars have enough air to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hamlin wasn\u2019t sure whether it\u2019s Goodyear or NASCAR making the final car on the tire compound for each race. But the decision-making needs work, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know. I can\u2019t really say who makes the call on that,\u201d he said. \u201cI do know that they had a tire that dropped off 2.5 seconds in 25 laps. So you would think like there\u2019s somewhere in this there\u2019s a happy medium to be had. How do you go from nothing to 2.5 seconds? Somewhere in here is a mix, right?<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd even if you have a tire, hell this one corded in 60 laps. So it had zero dropoff until it cords. So it\u2019s just, I don\u2019t know. This is not a good tire combination for this track.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hamlin bemoaned the fact that NASCAR doesn\u2019t have all that many races in the Midwest. The fans that do come to Iowa often do some from the neighboring states.<\/p>\n

The driver of the No. 11 pointed out how important it is for NASCAR to put out a good product for the fans making that kind of trek. That didn\u2019t happen Sunday.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou want to make it better, for sure,\u201d Hamlin said. \u201cUntil we get the front of these racecars on the ground instead of a foot off the ground we\u2019re going to continue to have the same problems, and that is when we get behind someone we\u2019re just going to plow.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe attitude of the cars are wrong. It\u2019s wrong, it\u2019s wrong, it\u2019s wrong, it\u2019s wrong, please fix it, it\u2019s wrong, it\u2019s wrong. Fix the attitude of the car, it\u2019ll make them better in traffic. More overbody, less underbody. If you want the same amount of downforce put it on the overbody, take it off the underbody. God dangit, it drives me crazy.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Reactions to the NASCAR Cup Series race at Iowa on Sunday were mixed. It was a compelling enough…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":120180,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[1406,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-120179","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nascar","8":"tag-nascar","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114974738684334986","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=120179"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120179\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/120180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}