Dale Earnhardt Jr. reacts to Denny Hamlin rant, offers fix to NASCAR biggest superspeedway problem

Dale Earnhardt Jr. agrees with Denny Hamlin in that NASCAR has a problem when it comes to the current state of superspeedway racing.

Hamlin offered a lengthy monologue on his “Actions Detrimental” podcast, in which he lamented how big of a role luck plays in deciding the outcome of superspeedway races while calling out drivers for “dumbass racing.” While Earnhardt doesn’t believe the sky is falling, he sees the same issues Hamlin is seeing.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. responds to Denny Hamlin’s superspeedway rant

“Watching the entire weekend from ARCA to Trucks to Xfinity to Cup — there’s a lot to unpack there but I don’t know that it’s ‘The sky is falling,'” Earnhardt said on the Dale Jr. Download. “… The common thread for me is we’ve added a ton of drag to every class — ARCA, Truck, Xfinity, Cup — we choked the motors down and the gap between what a car or truck will run by itself versus what it does in the draft has grown, and that’s the problem.

“When I look at it, the issue that I have with the current product at Daytona, Talladega and Atlanta is that all of the series no matter what series, they all suffer from this: We have choked everything down and put so much drag on the body that they can’t get away from each other. A good car can’t drive away from a bad car. An experienced driver can’t distance himself from a guy or a girl who doesn’t have the experience. Years ago, you’d bring a car down there and if you were fast, you drove away from the slow guys. You’d break the draft and they’re inexperienced and their car’s inability to perform would separate the field and we don’t have that anymore.

“Now, the cars are so draggy, and the engines are so stifled, that everybody’s all over the top of each other. That just leads to some of the silliest crashes that are just so unnecessary. This has been going on a long time — over a decade. The thing’s I hear Denny saying today, those were my postrace comments after Talladega, after Daytona back in 2012 [and so on].”

Denny Hamlin: Daytona 500, superspeedway racing is game of luck now

Hamlin took issue with much of the action during Sunday’s Daytona 500, in which there were three big wrecks in the last 15 laps and the race finished in overtime for the sixth time in the last eight years. William Bryon, racing seventh at the time of the final wreck on the last lap of overtime, escaped through the carnage to take the checkered flag.

“I feel like the Daytona 500 is a microcosm of the sport in general as to how we crown our champion now as well,” Hamlin said. “It started with the competition group a decade ago when we took away horsepower because we wanted to look good on TV, we wanted you to think they can pass, but not that they can actually pass. For me, it’s gotten to the place where the entertainment of it has far taken over the sport of it. And I don’t know how to reverse things.”

Earnhardt said it’s time to “reimagine the drag to power ratio” of the Next Gen car at Daytona and Talladega. For Earnhardt, the two-time Daytona 500 champion, drag — along with a decrease in horsepower — are contributing to the lack of excitement at superspeedways.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. offers solution to fix superspeedway racing

“I believe that all of the classes, we need to reimagine the entire way we approach restrictor plate racing,” Earnhardt said. “I call it restrictor plate racing even though we don’t run restrictor plates anymore, but I just can’t say the word draft track or whatever the f*** people are referring to this stupid s***. It annoys the s*** out of me. … But what we need to do is really simple, it’s not hard, we don’t need to blow it up. It’s fine.

“We just need to get in a room and reimagine the drag to power ratio. How the cars react to each other and around each other. We gotta change the drag to power ratio to where the delta between what a car can do by itself on the racetrack versus in the pack isn’t such a big range. When they go out and qualify by themselves, they run several mph slower as opposed to when they’re in the draft. So, when you take that car and you put it in the draft, you can’t get out of line unless you know you got a lot of help because the car has so much drag, it’s just gonna fall on its face.

“That is the core of the issue that I have with the way the cars race at Daytona and Talladega. … We need to reimagine the way we’re doing this, and it may mean that we’ll see less three-wide racing, less 2×2 all the way through the field, but I think it might end up taking away the fuel issue that we have which we have to fix that. We have to get away from fuel saving.”