Denny Hamlin loves NASCAR's transparency on counterfeit parts after huge Stewart-Haas penalty
Denny Hamlin praised NASCAR for their transparency in displaying and explaining why the No. 14 Stewart-Haas Racing team of Chase Briscoe received a hefty penalty for counterfeiting a part during the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway last month.
NASCAR issued an L3-level penalty, the most severe punishment under the sanctioning body’s deterrence system. The penalty was a loss of 120 driver and owner points and 25 NASCAR playoff points and a six-race suspension plus a $250,000 fine for crew chief Johnny Klausmeier.
This past weekend at Sonoma Raceway, NASCAR showed the air duct that was illegally modified and installed on Briscoe’s car. It was a welcome sight for Hamlin, who addressed it on his “Actions Detrimental” podcast Monday.
“Amen, that’s a great thing,” Hamlin said. “We pushed for it here many many weeks ago on this show that we’d love to see transparency… NASCAR — not only being transparent, but explaining it. I love what they did explaining because if they just set the part out, it’s still you know, no offense to you, Jared, but you don’t know what the f— you’re looking at. You wouldn’t know, but he’s like ‘Look at this template. It fits this one. Look at this, it does not fit this one. And we can see the textures are different so they made it themselves. It’s not one of our pieces. I love what they did there.”
Denny Hamlin voices support for NASCAR wanting to change culture in garage
Speaking with reporters, Brad Moran, managing director of the Cup Series, said the culture within the garage needs to change.
“Our message is we’re not going to back down,” Moran said Saturday, via NASCAR.com. “It’s been a culture in this garage [to modify parts] for decades. And for us all to be strong and have the racing that we had last year to continue on, we just need to break that habit. And start using the parts as they were designed for.”
Hamlin previously said he was in favor of the punishments handed down to the No. 14 team as a car owner himself.
“As a car owner [of 23XI Racing], I certainly support it,” Hamlin said. “It’s kinda what they said to us a long time ago about parts on the car… This is what the model is based off of. If we have to start designing our own parts, I mean, the model is already tough as it is, but I support any time whether a mistake or not, if there’s something — a part on the car that’s not original then certainly a penalty should be super heavy.”