Denny Hamlin explains main difference between Xfinity and Cup Series car

The new Next Gen cars used in the NASCAR Cup Series this year have been the source of some debate between drivers throughout the season, now that there’s been ample time to get used to them.

And not everybody is an outright fan.

The Next Gen cars simply operate differently than previous NASCAR iterations, such that there are some distinct differences to how races are playing out in the Cup Series this season.

“We’re in such a weird spot where the leader has such an advantage on that track because he’s got the clean air,” Denny Hamlin said after the Brickyard 400 on the Actions Detrimental podcast. “You can run so much faster when you have the clean air. And we all know these Next Gen cars are terrible in traffic. They’re the worst cars in NASCAR in traffic. So when we designed them we designed a car that is worse than it’s ever been in traffic.”

That combination has led to some interesting races in the Cup Series. And it’s not that there haven’t been any highly interesting, very compelling races in NASCAR this season.

They’ve just looked different.

Hamlin noted that he had a feeling these Next Gen cars were going to be a problem, and he has seemingly been vindicated based on his read on things.

“I asked them three times, three times I asked John Probst before this car came out, ‘Are you sure it’s right? Because you haven’t put it around any other cars during these preseason testings,'” Hamlin said. “Then finally in December before they launched the car they put it on track with another car and they see that it’s, ‘Oh s***, we’ve got a problem.’ Well no kidding. You had two years to figure this out. God, it’s frustrating as hell.”

Because it’s hard to pass now in the Next Gen Cup Series cars, races like the Brickyard 400, on a relatively narrow track, become a battle of wits as much as anything else.

The double-overtime finish in Indy might not have been perfect, but it was entertaining.

“The race was at least compelling because of the strategies, right?” Hamlin said. “It certainly was compelling, and when I watched it back it was like, ‘OK.’ And I kind of warned the folks listening in on this last week that, ‘Prepare, strap up your boots because this is what you’re going to see this weekend. You’re going to have to just embrace the strategy part of it.'”

One thing it changed was the decision by drivers to stay out longer. That’s in part due to the Cup Series cars, in part due to the tires.

“The reason we also had these fuel mileage races is because tires are outlasting the gas tank,” Hamlin explained. “The gas tank, the tires need to go out before the gas tank does. I mean really, you could have, I don’t know how many laps you could run on said tires, but my guess it would be a ton, a ton of laps. It was all about track positioning. Track position, track position. And while there were passes from the 5 car (of Kyle Larson) in Stage 3 to the end, he was racing against everyone running half-throttle. So it just, it’s not as it seems. Had everyone been running all out, passing was just not good. Not good at all.”

These things are not necessarily issues in the Xfinity Series, where Hamlin sees drivers passing each other with a lot more ease than in the Cup Series.

The Next Gen cars just make it difficult.

“This is what it is. It’s never put on a great race, but you then watch the Xfinity race and it’s like they’re able to pass,” Hamlin said. “If a good car is able to pass, then they’re able to manipulate the car in front of them instead of getting manipulated by the car in front of them.

“That is the big difference in Xfinity and Cup, is that Cup, the closer you get to them, your car takes off. You lose all down-force, it’s done. The closer you get to the car in front of you in Xfinity, and what we saw Riley Herbst and many others do, is that as soon as you get close to the rear of the car, they start losing rear down-force and then they get off the bottom and you shuck them. That’s what we used to do with the Gen 4 car and 5 car, is that we could always get the guy in front of us loose. Now you can’t do that because they’re not making any over-body aerodynamics and it’s all under-body. So you’re not able to take air off their spoiler because there’s not hardly any air going on the spoiler in the first place. So we’ve got a physics problem.”

Hamlin has admitted his frustration with the whole thing. And as an owner in the Cup Series, he wishes he simply had more of a say in the matter.

“I wish they would just let us come up with our own package for that track just one time and let us decide what we’re going to run,” Hamlin said. “But we’re just, we’ve been in this zone for a while now where we either need to slow way down more or we need to speed up to allow handling to really matter.”