Denny Hamlin Spill the Beans NASCAR’s Plan to Make Next-Gen Cars Similar to O’Reilly Cars

One of the biggest challenge the NASCAR leadership has been fighting hard behind the scenes to fix is the Next-Gen cars issue with overtaking. While the 7^th gen cars made the competition closer than ever, it reduced the entertainment factor.

Joe Gibbs Racing veteran Denny Hamlin discussed this factor in the latest episode of his Actions Detrimental Podcast. He highlighted how the race product is getting affected by the almost unfair advantage leading cars owing to the aero-features of the current cars.

This needs to be fixed and the No:11 driver highlighted the R&D team is working hard behind to scene to find a solution, especially this season under the new leadership of Steve O’Donell. There needs to be some rule change, with acceptable consequences to make it happen.

I’m not really sure how you’re gonna get rid of that advantage that the front car has. I know NASCAR is actively working on trying to get the pitch back in the cars. You know, there are rules that have to get changed to make that happen. There’s also unintended consequences that they’re trying to think through.

Denny Hamlin said on his podcast.

In the words of Denny Hamlin, NASCAR is looking to make the Next-Gen cars behave similar to the O’Reilly Series cars, as the second division is the most entertaining product from the sport. If successful, the stock car racing fans would get exactly what they asked for.

But you know, getting the platform more back to where the O’Reilly’s car is. Where jamming air behind somebody is something that happens that you know they’re trying. They’re working on that behind the scenes.

Denny Hamlin added via Actions Detrimental.

Denny Hamlin explains what he needs to do get back in the championship chase

In the same podcast, Hamlin talked about his performance last Sunday at Charlotte Motor Speedway. The No:11 Toyota Camry driver started the race at P12, made some mistake over execution mid-way to the race and ended up finishing P5.

Though he finished ahead of title rival Kyle Larson, failure to secure more points on stage one hurt him. He was 40 being leader coming to Sunday and went back home with a 49 points deficit. Talking about the challenges, he admitted that the needs to better in execution to get back to the top.

Just didn’t have the long run speed that we needed. I thought the short run was OK, it was decent. When the track cooled off, it just is not what I really planned on and it certainly leveled the field… Got to execute better, be a little faster, all the above. Ultimately, we’re giving it all we got right now.

Denny Hamlin asserted.

There are just four more races left in the 2026 season and if he can’t win one of the upcoming two events, the No:5 team might run away with the title. It would be interesting to see how everything is going to layout foe the star driver in the coming weeks.

Also Read: Denny Hamlin Names Two Tier-1 NASCAR Teams That Might Sign Brad Keselowski For 2027