Denny Hamlin says NASCAR wins over people who go to a race, but it struggles to introduce its drivers to everyone else.
Hamlin made the comments in an interview with Front Office Sports, which shared a clip on X on Thursday.
“There’s so many people that when they actually go to a NASCAR race, they enjoy it so much and it’s, you know, they become hooked on it,” Hamlin said.
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“And, but how do you get the eyeballs when we’re all fighting for them, right? And like you said, the big four, what makes us a little bit different is that there is no face,” Hamlin said.
The “big four” is a common shorthand for the NFL, NBA, MLB and NHL, the major U.S. leagues that NASCAR and the rest of motorsports compete with for viewers.
Hamlin pointed to Formula 1’s Netflix series Drive to Survive, which debuted in 2019.
“What made Drive to Survive, in my opinion, so popular is that you got to know the personalities,” Hamlin said.
“And sometimes it wasn’t even the personalities of the drivers. It was the CEOs, the principals of the race team,” Hamlin said.
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Hamlin sees the sport as both a driver and a team owner. He drives the No. 11 Toyota for Joe Gibbs Racing and co-owns 23XI Racing with Michael Jordan. The three-time Daytona 500 winner also hosts the weekly Actions Detrimental podcast, where he often talks about the business of the sport.
He said fans connect with a driver once they know where that person came from.
“That’s where people get attached is to know the life story of someone. And then you start to pull for that person for whatever that reason is,” Hamlin said.
NASCAR has tried that approach. Netflix’s NASCAR: Full Speed followed Cup drivers through the 2023 postseason and returned in 2025 to cover the 2024 title run, according to EssentiallySports.
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NASCAR also released Rising on YouTube in November 2025. The series followed Carson Hocevar, Jesse Love and Rajah Caruth through their seasons.
Earlier this week, Hamlin backed a shorter season on Rubbin’ Is Racing, saying NASCAR has to “make the people miss it.”
The sport’s audience has been a talking point this fall. The Oct. 18 race at Phoenix drew 1.294 million viewers on USA, down from about 1.7 million for the comparable 2025 race at Las Vegas.
Hamlin is fourth in the Chase standings, 31 points behind Kyle Larson. He races Sunday at Talladega Superspeedway, the first of the final three races in the Chase.
