After another superspeedway race that was viewed as only mildly compelling by many fans, Denny Hamlin hammered down on the problem with superspeedway racing. It mainly boiled down to the sheer amount of drag on the current Cup Series cars.

That amount of drag makes it hard to do anything but race in a 2×2 set of lines at a place like Talladega. It’s hard to pull out of line and attempt to make a pass.

So drivers end up competing instead by fuel saving or trying to make up valuable track position by minimizing time on pit road. Cycle out toward the front late in the race and you’re unlikely to give up that ground unless you crash.

But after bemoaning the state of superspeedway racing, Denny Hamlin turned toward the fix. And he provided an immediate solution for NASCAR. It isn’t changing the stage lengths but rather a tweak to the car.

“I appreciate them trying to change it, though. No, it did not work, but they tried,” Hamlin said on the Actions Detrimental podcast. “And I hope next time they try something different. My first recommendation is please cut the spoiler off this car. Please. Do whatever it takes. If we’ve got to run 210 (miles per hour), we’ll run 210. It’s fine. Just please get some drag out of this car.”

Denny Hamlin explained how that would instantly fix a lot of problems. He continued.

“It’s got hundreds of counts more than our Gen 6 car, hundreds of counts more drag,” he said. “If you let us pull out of line and know that we can come out of our pit stop in 10th and still have a chance to win because we’re going to pull out of line and make runs and sh*t, we won’t care about the fuel savings. I promise you that.”

That would make for much more compelling racing for fans. As it stands, things are often quite status quo at the end of superspeedway races. Only a handful of drivers toward the front have a shot.

That harshly penalizes any mistakes, as Hamlin’s costly speeding penalty showed on Sunday. It also makes for a so-so viewing experience.

“If NASCAR said, ‘You know what, we agree.’ First, it’s going to take them to agree,” Hamlin said. “Agree that we want to see somebody, we want to see Dale Earnhardt being able to go from 17th to first in eight laps. That would never exist today. They would have to agree that they want to do something about it. Then they would have to go to the stakeholders, and the No. 1 primary stakeholders that would have issue with this would be the engine-builders, because they would have to go to them and say, ‘We need to cut the horsepower down.’

“Now the reason the manufacturers would have an issue with that is that they’ve spent lots and lots of money developing their superspeedway engines at these horsepowers.”

Pull the spoiler off and the speeds will increase. Denny Hamlin did admit there’s a danger there.

“Yeah, they’re more apt to lift off, which that’s not good for anyone,” he said. “I don’t think anyone wants that. So you’ve got to make some engine compromises with the drag that comes out.”

Can NASCAR tweak the car such that superspeedway racing is a bit more compelling? It’s likely going to try in January at the Preseason Thunder tests. Hamlin summed up the issue.

“We’re running hundreds more horsepower, it feels like,” he said. “Maybe 150, I don’t know, than what they used to. The cars go slower today but have more horsepower than they’ve had on superspeedways (in the past). It’s just because the drag and this way these cars are designed. This car is not designed to be superspeedway racing.”