Denny Hamlin explains how a NASCAR team manufactures their car

Denny Hamlin is letting fans in on how teams build the Next Gen car to go racing in the NASCAR Cup Series.

The Joe Gibbs Racing wheelman went off on a fascinating tangent during this week’s episode of Actions Detrimental, where he elaborated on what goes into racing the Next Gen car week-in and week-out.

“We all have the same 200 piece Lego set, but it’s still not the same. You know, we put it together a little differently, or there’s resources. There’s engines. There’s hundreds, literally hundreds of parts that get made still at the shop, that goes on to the race car,” explained Hamlin. “So we all have the lego set of the Next Gen car. The same parts and pieces that, here’s the Next Gen car. NASCAR says you have to buy these parts. This should be NASCAR 101. We’re just going to put it right here, at the beginning of the show. So it doesn’t actually put the car together. There’s still fasteners. There’s still brackets. There’s still all kinds of different things, that if you buy NASCAR’s Next Gen car, you have hundreds and hundreds of parts and pieces you still either need to manufacture, or get from another supplier that’s not mandated, that actually puts the car together. So the Next Gen comes with essentially a booklet of how to put it together. It comes with an instruction manual.

“I mean, this is hilarious. … I think Kyle Busch called it, it might’ve been the Wal-Mart Car or something. No no no, this is IKEA. For sure, IKEA. … So you’ve to to put it together. They give you the manual to put it together. But things like seat brackets. Dashes. The carbon-fiber dash. There isn’t a mandate for that stuff. So that’s why you see the interior of a Joe Gibbs Racing car look different than a Hendrick Motorsports car. So, we as the drivers, come up with, here’s what I’d like our dash to look like. I’d like for it to have some depth to it. Some 3-D look to it. You want it to be light. You want it to be minimalistic. You don’t want to carry any weight that you don’t have to, because these things are already extremely, extremely heavy. There’s fasteners. There’s a lot of other stuff that I don’t even know about.”

While NASCAR provides the baseline, it’s fascinating to hear that there’s still so much teams have to take care of on their own. The Cup Series will be in action once again this weekend at the Charlotte Roval, as the final race of the Round of 12 will be an emotional affair, for sure.