Denny Hamlin Exposes the Harsh Power NASCAR Gives Single Source Suppliers As They Make Owners’ Lives Harder

Besides being one of the most coveted sports in the US, NASCAR is also a $100 million entertainment business. And, the word ‘business’, enters money into the conversation. Needless to say, a huge deal of financial investment goes into the three top-level NASCAR races. And most of it comes from the team owner’s side.

The team owners put in big money for their cars to run in the races. So much so that the France family and NASCAR brought about the system of Charters to secure these hefty chunks of money. However, being a team owner himself, Denny Hamlin revealed how NASCAR is giving the owners a hard time by virtue of its single supplier deals.

Denny Hamlin points at the ongoing monopoly on next-gen car parts

NASCAR has individual companies that it relies on for the production. For example, Goodyear makes the tires, while Sunoco supplies the fuel for the 700 HP engines. However, the problem that this causes is what concerns the 23XI Racing owner.

When 40 cars run in winning contention, the chances of crashes are high. And whenever a car gets wrecked, the owner has just a week to get it fixed or replaced. And that requires a copious amount of money. Denny Hamlin exclaimed, “When you’re looking at these next-gen cars; you’re looking at Lambos. They are expensive.”

The Joe Gibbs Racing driver explained how these companies have no rival in the market that could build these components for lower prices. And hence, the owners have no choice but to pay the price that these companies quote. Hamlin admitted, “They can somewhat dictate what the price is. They can come to us and say there’s a certain amount of cost of the next-gen cars that they can automatically raise and not even have to get the okay.”

This becomes a huge issue for the owners, especially when a car crashes in a NASCAR race. In a recent episode of Actions Detrimental, Denny Hamlin’s co-host Jared Allen asked, “Is it safe to say that the cost could go up more because you’re still trying to find out what this car can handle in a crash and to make changes?”

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Although they had a rough estimate, nobody can actually predetermine the magnitude of damage that a stock car can withstand. Nevertheless, the crash budget has come up even higher since last year. The 42-year-old speedster said, “I remember looking at the budget this year at the end of last year and I’m like, man, you’re jacking up the crash budget that much? I don’t wanna have to come to you and say, hey we missed the budget on this.”

Interestingly, this is not the only thing about NASCAR that bothers Denny Hamlin.

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Despite being unsure of the implications, the #11 Toyota Camry pilot felt like the big shot teams of NASCAR had enough resources to build the components of the next-gen cars right inside the shop. That way, they could optimize the costs.

Hamlin said, “If you look at the facilities, that teams have such as Joe Gibbs Racing, Hendrick Motorsports, Stewart-Haas, Richard Childress Racing…all these big four car teams, they could build these next-gen cars. We could build the next-gen cars in house.”

He then moved on to explain how else NASCAR puts them in an unfavorable position as far as costs are concerned. The Florida resident said, “What we want as team owners is for our cost to compete to be covered by the league.”

“There is not a league where the cost to compete is not covered except for, in NASCAR,” he added.

Do you agree with Denny Hamlin? Or do you feel like the Charter franchise will rapidly lose its worth if NASCAR starts covering the competing costs for the teams?

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