"We are the steak and the floorboard is the grill" - Denny Hamlin's unfortunate NASCAR predictions have been coming true

Denny Hamlin is arguably NASCAR's biggest advocate for change. The 41-year-old driver has been in a position in the sport which only a few have experienced, lending him an edge his competitors just don't have.

The Tampa, Florida native's 2022 Cup Series season, which saw one of the biggest stock car rule changes in modern times, kicked off to a rocky start. The Joe Gibbs Racing driver struggled to adapt to a changed seventh-generation car and its sequential gearbox. Along with the 'Next Gen' car's 18-inch wheels and tires, it also came with vastly different handling to last year, which proved to be a challenge for Hamlin.

Seventeen races into the season, the 23XI Racing co-owner now has two wins and four top-10 finishes under his belt but is still trying to find consistency in his performances. This brings us to his statements last year, where he did not shy away from highlighting the issues with the new car. One such problem he was able to foresee was the heat inside the cabin, as he went on to elaborate, saying:

“We are the steak and the floorboard is the grill, we cook from the bottom up. This thing is an entirely different machine. There will certainly be more wrecks, no question.”

So far into the current season, Denny Hamlin's words have come true. The 2022 Cup Series season has seen 33 more caution flags compared to last year in the same number of races. The races at Dover and Charlotte saw 13 and 18 caution flags up from 7 and 4 respectively.

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Denny Hamlin has also had his fair share of crashes in 2022

The volatile nature of the Next Gen car's debut season, as predicted by 23XI co-owner Denny Hamlin, has come true for other drivers as well as himself. Increased caution flags and more wrecked cars during a race mean the #11 FedEx Toyota Camry TRD driver has also been involved in his fair share of incidents.

In 17 races so far, Hamlin has managed to not finish five times, which is higher than his past three seasons combined. The benefits of this season's unpredictable nature are reaped by the fans in full, as this provides exciting and unpredictable racing, which is what the sport wants to lure newer fans in.