Denny Hamlin Dampens NASCAR High-Speed Package Concerns

23XI Racing co-owner and Joe Gibbs Racing driver Denny Hamlin has addressed NASCAR’s efforts to try and find a solution for the Next Gen cars flipping at superspeedways.

With high-speed aero changes anticipated to be introduced for Talladega but not coming to fruition in time, the topic has become a popular talking point for the drivers and media.

While speaking to the media ahead of the Jack Link’s 500 at Talladega Superspeedway today, Hamlin claimed that he wouldn’t consider the changes as a high priority. He commented:

“Still have work to do to figure out if something’s gonna work or not. I don’t know. It’s gonna be really hard to keep ’em on the ground just because any kind of certain speed and certain angles, things are gonna fly. But, I don’t know. I haven’t seen that many bad injuries from flips.

“I get it. We don’t want ’em to go up in the fence. But I just think it’s making the racing not quite as good as slowing down, running the speeds that we’re running and we’re doing that essentially to try to keep the cars on the ground. But to me, I wouldn’t put it on a high priority.”

NASCAR had been testing package options earlier this year, something which RFK Racing co-owner and driver Brad Keselowski was involved with. The 41-year-old driver gave some insight into the tests ahead of the race weekend:

“RFK [Racing] was part of the test at Michigan probably three or four weeks ago, where we explored different options to help the cars at track at very high speed and Michigan is very speed.

“The options, unfortunately, didn’t pan out that NASCAR had worked to develop, so it wasn’t a surprise that there weren’t any changes.

“I knew there was effort being put into it and, candidly, not everything you try is gonna work, but I appreciate that there was effort put into it and I think there’s very much a back to the drawing board mentality. I don’t feel like it’s not being worked on, but we’re not gonna skip the race just because we haven’t figured something out, so the show goes on.”

Cars becoming airborne or flipping became a big concern in 2023. There were numerous flips in the Cup Series which fuelled efforts to introduce a new high-speed package.

NASCAR is hopeful to have the new high-speed package ready for Daytona in August.