Denny Hamlin reacts to NASCAR changing damaged vehicle policy for 2025

NASCAR made a number of new rule changes ahead of the 2025 season and they’re about to be put into action for the first time with the running of the Daytona 500 on Sunday. The damaged vehicle policy will be one of them.

Now, drivers have the opportunity to enter the garage to make repairs with the option to return to the race still.

“If you kept up with all that, the basic change is that you can go back to the garage now, take as long as you want to get your car fixed,” Denny Hamlin explained on his Actions Detrimental podcast. “And they’re saying we can take you to the garage and you can have as long as you want to fix it, but you’ve got one shot when you go back out there to make minimum speed and then you can keep going.”

If drivers drive or are towed to pit road, they will still have a seven-minute time window to get back on the track (eight minutes at Atlanta Motor Speedway).

For Hamlin, the new damaged vehicle policy shouldn’t change much.

“So when you think about it generally, let’s not knee-jerk too much, that doesn’t change a whole lot when it comes to the finish, right?” Hamlin said. “Because if you go to the garage, you spend more than seven minutes, you go back to the race, you’re going to be so many laps down it’s not going to be a huge deal, folks.”

That’s not to say the damaged vehicle policy alteration won’t create some change. Drivers will need to be strategic — if at all possible — about their vehicles in big dust-ups.

“Where this does change things, I guess, is that they’re saying they’re willing to tow you to your pit stall,” Hamlin said. “OK, so I think they weren’t towing you to your pit stall until after Talladega. It was Chase Elliott they brought to his pit stall. I think it was Talladega where they took Chase all the way to his stall and people were like, ‘What the hell?’ So anyway, they say they will do that now for everyone.

“Now the only kink in this is that it is still going to matter when you get towed.”

How? the veteran NASCAR driver broke down the quirk in the new damaged vehicle policy that drivers need to be aware of.

“So if there is a multi-car accident where there’s more cars wrecked than tow trucks, the order in which you get towed will definitely matter. So I would make friends with the tow truck people,” Hamlin said, a bit tongue in cheek. “When you’re doing your driver intro and you’re going around — you always have the safety vehicles, they have their crews outside of wherever they’re positioned. So say they’re on the inside of the wall of Turn 2 and Turn 3 and Turn 4, so all the safety crews come out and give us a wave as we’re doing our driver intros. Got to give them the old tip of the hat.”