"It is not what it used to be": Denny Hamlin accepts being 'biased' in addressing NASCAR's output at Talladega

Denny Hamlin recently spoke about the Talladega Cup race on his podcast show. During the latest episode of Actions Detrimental, the Joe Gibbs Racing driver, who finished 21st in Sunday's race at the superspeedway, shared his thoughts on the racing product.

Hamlin claimed that the race was 'an okay' one. It's worth mentioning that the race was won by Austin Cindric, a Team Penske driver behind the wheel of a Ford. However, there was only one Toyota driver in the top 10, Bubba Wallace, Hamlin's own driver in the #23 car who finished 8th.

But despite Hamlin deeming Talladega an 'okay' race, and despite the state of Toyotas at the end, he did appreciate his manufacturer backed teams' attempts to improve the state of affairs.

"I think that certainly the Toyotas made it better by at least trying to run wide open and run as fast as we could and say screw the fuel mileage game. But overall, I don't know. I'm very biased because I know how it used to be and I'll just be one of those old grumpy men on the porch saying, 'Get off my lawn,' saying, 'It is not what it used to be,'" Hamlin described. [36:28]

The 23XI Racing co-owner further spoke about his own race when he found himself with 'nowhere' to go when he was 20th. He was told by his team about him being short on fuel, despite which, he could've made it to the end.

But Denny Hamlin said that there was still 'nowhere to go' in a race that became a two by two with drivers not being able to pull out of line because of the drag factor in the Next Gen car.

This is why, Denny Hamlin suggested, the Hendrick Motorsports drivers were pushing as he further claimed:

"You can't go anywhere. You can't force middle. You can't There's nothing you can do. So you just stay in the line that you're in. And it's it superspeedway race after superspeedway race is just going to be constantly a battle over who can get in and out of the pits the quickest. That's it. That's all this game is."

Hamlin added that it is Team Penske drivers that have learned to master the game 'better than the rest.'

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Denny Hamlin spoke about the superspeedway woes for NASCAR in Next Gen era last year

Speaking on Actions Detrimental in October last year, Denny Hamlin addressed the superspeedway issues in racing because of the Next Gen car. Hamlin said that the reason why the racecars are generating so much drag is because they have 'too much horsepower.'

He recalled the days of running 300 horsepower on superspeedways, but now, they are running 600 on all the racetracks. And to keep the cars from going above 220 mph, all NASCAR did was add a spoiler to keep the car down in speed on the outer body as per Hamlin.

Because of this, Denny Hamlin suggested that in order to solve these issues, the way to go forward is to go old school. He claimed:

"So get that out of there, go back to a smaller tapered spacer for superspeedways and then it'll allow us to make more aggressive three four wide moves when we get a run take it versus just staying in the line. That was my fix."

With that said, it'll be interesting to see if NASCAR decides to take some major steps in improving the state of superspeedway racing. Whether there'll be changes in the Next Gen car's package or whether there'll be changes on the rules or format side, only time will tell.