Denny Hamlin follows a format every Monday when he sits down with a mic in front of him to record his “Actions Detrimental” podcast. It includes reviewing the races from the weekend before and talking about the various topics that developed as well as looking forward to the races in the upcoming weekend. It also includes discussing news items that happened since the last episode.
On Monday when doing the latter, the Joe Gibbs Racing driver revisited the remarks of NASCAR’s Senior Vice President of Competition Elton Sawyer on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio from the week before when he talked about Talladega and questioned whether anything needed to be fixed at the 2.66-mile superspeedway, which was the direct opposite of the feelings for many fans and drivers after the race.
“I think that in my opinion, when we had Elton go on last week, talk about superspeedway racing and say, ‘I don’t understand. What do we have to fix? Look at the stats that we’ve got for this week. We had 67 lead changes and whatever else.’ I think you lose some credibility with the fans,” Hamlin said on the podcast. “And I think the fans have a low morale right now due to their lack of faith in the competition leadership. I don’t know how else to say it. I think that it’s a tough position they’re in. I think that they should probably just cancel the whole coming on the radio.
“I know why they’re doing it. I know why NASCAR comes on every Tuesday morning and says, ‘Let me tell you why we did this, or tell you why we did that.’ I appreciate that transparency from them. But when you go in there and you kind of brush off what every driver said and has said for quite some time with the superspeedway package. Go back three years worth of podcast. I’ve said we’ve got a superspeedway problem and we kept ignoring it.”
This week on his “Actions Detrimental” podcast, @dennyhamlin criticized @NASCAR officials for making up stats and brought up an interesting conversation he had with @MW55. pic.twitter.com/yQ5xogyCdJ
— Kyle Dalton (@kdsportswriter) May 8, 2025
The 44-year-old continued, talking about how NASCAR made up its own stats to look good and a few moments later mentioned how the sanctioning body doesn’t give the fanbase enough credit and surprisingly brought up a recent interaction he had with Michael Waltrip on the golf course.
“The problem in my mind is that our race fans are smarter than that,” the three-time Daytona 500 winner said. “I believe truthfully in my bottom of my heart, most of our race fans — Michael Waltrip said this to me this weekend. We were golfing and he’s like, ‘I don’t understand what everyone’s so mad about. Look, the cars are two by two and the casual fan doesn’t know that they can’t pass.’
“I’m like, ‘The amount of casual fans watching us each and every week is 10%. I mean, our fans are core, man. They know what they’re seeing. They’re smarter than you think they are.’”
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