Denny Hamlin Aligns With Tony Stewart’s Team Member’s Unanticipated Frustrations After NASCAR’s Endangering Lapse at Gateway

Imagining a world without the Internet today seems to be a pointless exercise, to begin with. It has become an indispensable part of our existence. While many of us might find it impossible to think what it would feel like to work without the Internet, NASCAR bore witness to such a situation on Sunday.

The Cup Series race at the World Wide Technology Raceway seemed to limp when it came to frictionless broadcasts, as the race suffered considerably due to poor technological infrastructure. For a brief amount of time, the broadcasting was abandoned due to a problem that stemmed out of the AT&T fiber.

This outage has resulted in a lot of questions getting raised about the importance of high-speed Internet in races. Can NASCAR afford to go back to the pre-internet era? The answer is a resounding NO. Joe Gibbs Racing‘s Denny Hamlin tells why.

Denny Hamlin follows Rodney Childers in reinforcing the significance of SMT data and its use in the races

The Enjoy Illinois 300 did not turn out to be enjoyable for the drivers and teams, as the race was nothing less than a debacle for a few teams. Apart from brake rotor failure, which took four drivers out of contention, including both the drivers of the 23XI Racing team, internet access was another obstacle to the smooth functioning of the race. 

Due to the power outage, the broadcasting screens along with the in-car cameras stopped functioning. This also led to teams losing internet access. Valuable SMT data was lost and the connection between the pit road and the war rooms also got snagged. Although the power was promptly restored, within that short yet critical period of time, the drivers were left to make decisions based on their intuitions.

Even Kevin Harvick’s crew chief Rodney Childers later wrote on Twitter, “Had a better car than 10th yesterday, but just a tough race. Having no timing and scoring, no SMT, no laps on fuel or tires, no communication with my engineers at the shop,,, all was Extremely frustrating.. I felt so lost..”

Denny Hamlin had a more detailed argument regarding it all, as he expressed on the latest episode of his podcast. He remarked, “I saw Rodney Childers’s comment. Listen I didn’t have any SMT, no laps, no tires, or fuel. He is trying to make a strategy call and get them all on the same boat.

“But a lot of times, when you make strategy calls, is because you are looking at the list of who has got tires, when was the last time they pitted, and how many tires did they take, how many laps can fuel can they go, and you take all that information and you put it in the pot and stir it up and you say, ‘okay here is the best loop for me.’

“And so when you are driving blindly, you really don’t know who is in front of you and what strategy they are on. So it won’t make your call as informed as it would be normally.”

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Hamlin debunks the idea of NASCAR functioning without the technological advancements

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While replying to Jared Allen’s question about whether NASCAR would be better off without the internet and would have good results, Hamlin, “You can’t go backward, that would be saying, man, if we didn’t have our cars so loaded at the ground and all the cars running at the same speed, we had great racing. What you want to say is to forget all the knowledge we have learned.”

The #11 Toyota driver also added, “Communication at the back of the shop and engineers likely on some sort of intercom system with the shop. A lot of the big teams have war rooms, where they are looking at the race and have gotten their information and they can give Rodney a heads up of, ‘Hey, the data shows or the simulation shows that we probably should pit here or not pit here, take 2 or fuel only.’ They give him an outsider’s perspective.

“And if you ever ask a crew chief that has ever been suspended, man when you take me away from the race track, I have got so much more information. So they rely on the guys that are not in the bubble of the race track to give them level-headed information. That makes us hard to go back to what we shouldn’t be communicating.”

Given the fact of how technology has evolved by leaps and bounds, it is impossible to think about a race functioning without the internet. It will only add to the risk factor of the race, as the drivers will have to rely a lot on their own instincts while making strategic calls. This may also lead to on-track wrecks and disrupt the whole flow of the race due to the lack of communication.

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