Denny Hamlin made it clear that he wants NASCAR to rethink the way stages are currently being handled.
On the most recent episode of Actions Detrimental following the NASCAR Cup race at Charlotte Motor Speedway, Hamlin declared, “Truthfully, what the stages are kind of doing also is that it’s allowing us to not have to run more than about 40 laps on a set of tires on any given stage especially on the mile and a halfs. When we talked about Kansas a few weeks ago and Vegas, man, the tire is so good there, but as soon as it starts to fall off, boom, it’s halfway through a stage, go pit.”
“If they were moved slightly or whatever, for the crowd that hates stages, if you just kept on going and rewarded the points then it definitely would play factor in more comers than goes,” he continued. “But I do believe that the restarts are important to NASCAR and the TV.”
A little bit later on, he declared, “Stages is stopping the coming and going of cars.”
He explained, “Everyone’s going to be fine with their tires if they know they only got to go 40 [laps] on these mile and a halfs. It’s universal and it’s all mile and a halfs.”
“I’m just thinking out loud and it doesn’t make sense from a numbers perspective” Hamlin added. “But if like the stages were 100, 100, 67. It doesn’t make sense. But now, do you pit in that final stage? 67 laps on that set of tires? Yikes. Do you pit? Do you not? Now, you’ve moved the stages from 80 laps to — we’ll take out the cautions. It’s really 74 laps that the cautions are. So, now that’s 37 laps per set. No one’s going to have tire issues. No one’s going to have tire wear issues. We’re not taking advantage of the great tire that Goodyear has provided to us because the stages are stopping that from happening and allowing us to pit right in the middle of them.”
Hamlin then shared another option for the stages, “I’m just thinking out loud here. Maybe it’s 60, 120, 267. So the third stage is longer. You don’t want the third stage the shortest stage. Make it that fringe amount.”
“Now, I don’t know how far we go on fuel, but we definitely have more fuel than tires. And it just seems like, yes, the field is about to really get scrambled and then boom, caution every time.”
Hamlin specifically noted that stages need to be longer so the tire wear comes into play, “You got to get above the 40 laps on tires. That’s when, I’m telling you, out there the drivers, we have an absolute handful. When did I start tanking? About 10 to go. That was 53 laps on tires. That’s lap 43. … I looked at the lap times when I got back in the bus. And I thought I was absolutely just all over the place and I was running 32 teens and 20s. The 12 was catching us and the 21, others. … And I looked at the timing and scoring after the race and I’m like, ‘Damn, look at all those cars running mid 32s! The 19, does he make it another two laps? I don’t know.”
Finally, he concluded, “If you kind of look at the stages and bump them one way. You need to extend them or shorten them to make it one fuel run or two full fuel runs per stage. I think you increase the racing and the overtaking that happens in them.”
0 Comments