Denny Hamlin Hits Out at NASCAR’s Hendrick Motorsports Bias Once Again: “Where’s the Transparency of It?”

In all racing sports, the marginal gain is what every team requires to excel. It is the marginal improvement that usually gives teams an edge over their opponents. It’s the same for NASCAR. The earlier you are at the party, the better. Hendrick Motorsports has been trying to find that gain, but its attempts have come up against opposition from Denny Hamlin.

Garage 56 started out as one of the prime projects in NASCAR. Taken up by Hendrick Motorsports, the project aimed to test the Next Gen car on road courses, and the first destination decided was a prestigious one – the Le Mans 24.

With the stakes involved, HMS was bound to benefit from the move, but the path wasn’t straightforward. Among the first to criticize was Denny Hamlin. No longer only a driver for Joe Gibbs Racing, Hamlin had joined the ownership table via his co-ownership of 23XI Racing.

According to SpeedSport, Hamlin told reports, “Finding out through a press conference is not OK. We have too many people in place, NASCAR has too many executives for that to have slipped through the cracks. Not that it slipped through the cracks, but like, where’s the transparency of it?”

He also said, “There’s certainly some performance advantages that every company is gonna be concerned with. Short of us being allowed to have the same track time, I do not see any way possible that they will not have an advantage and [Hendrick] is a team that already has won more races than anyone this season with the Next Gen.”

But all of that happened in March 2022; it has been close to 9 months since that – Hamlin is still not happy. His recent tweet with an update about the project shows.

HMS definitely has a lot to gain from this first-mover advantage. Should other teams also be getting the same chances?

What is Garage 56 and why is Denny Hamlin upset?

Garage 56 is not a new program by any means. Started in 2012, the testing program facilitates new technologies to be brought out into the real world – to find out their efficacy and efficiency.

NASCAR CEO Jim France said while launching the collaboration between HMS and Le Mans for the Next Gen car, “From the early days of NASCAR, it was important to my father that we played a visible role in international motorsports, and there is no bigger stage than the 24 Hours of Le Mans.”

“In partnering with Hendrick Motorsports, Chevrolet and Goodyear, we have the winningest team, manufacturer and tire in NASCAR history. We look forward to showcasing the technology in the Next Gen car and putting forward a competitive entry in the historic race.”

In other words, it is an attempt by NASCAR to advertise and market one of the most significant steps it has taken in recent history. The Gen 7 car. With the number of eyeballs that Le Mans gets, there can be no better stage to do it.

But for Hamlin, there is a strong conflict of interest involved in allowing only one team to participate in the testing process. “I just thought (from) a team owner standpoint, I’m concerned about how is it not an advantage? You cannot convince me right now that it won’t be,” he said.

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Do you agree with Hamlin’s dissensions? Let us know your thoughts!