This off-season has been a bit more interesting than usual. On one hand, the sport’s favorite racing legend, Dale Earnhardt Jr, took us back on a nostalgia trip with the return of his Budweiser #8 Chevy at the South Carolina 400. On the other, a storm is brewing in the federal court of Western North Carolina that’s got influential folks like Denny Hamlin, Michael Jordan, and Bob Jenkins worried if they’ll even be able to field a full team in the 2025 season.

Regardless, they’ve silently changed something in the pits to ‘cut costs’ next season—and it’s catching strays left and right on social media, particularly from Denny Hamlin and Dale Earnhardt Jr.

Dale Jr. and Denny Hamlin call out NASCAR’s financial double standards

Matt Weaver recently shared that NASCAR sent a memo to Truck Series teams outlining changes to something unexpected — crew members’ uniforms. According to Weaver’s report:

• Behind the wall pit crew members will need to have a submitted design for their fire suits. These suits cannot have sponsorship branding.
• Over the wall pit crew members will need to have a submitted design for their fire suits that you will use for the entire season. The fire suit design is at the team’s discretion. Sponsorship branding is allowed.
• Crew member garage shirts are at the team’s discretion. Sponsorship branding is allowed.

Essentially, they’re doing this to maintain a sense of uniformity across the garage. Also, some backmarker teams reuse their firesuits from the previous season. NASCAR wishes to put an end to that practice. All this is in the name of cost-cutting, mind you. Meanwhile, Truck Series purses have historically faced a massive disparity compared to the Cup Series, and even the Xfinity Series. The Cup Series received the lion’s share of $ 8,991,338 at this year’s Martinsville triple-header. Contrarily, the Truckers fought over a meager $672,417 grand prize.

In a series already operating on a fraction of the Cup Series’ resources, the decision to enforce stricter uniform policies over addressing larger disparities has left many scratching their heads. Dale Jr responded to Matt Weaver’s Twitter update with a GIF of a man patching a massive crack in a wall with duct tape. The message was obvious. One of the sport’s most important voices felt this little amendment did virtually nothing to address the bigger issue.

Then Denny Hamlin joined the conversation with a playful nod, sharing a GIF from the iconic ‘Flex Tape’ commercial, where the host dramatically slaps a strip of that tape over a hole in the container of gushing water. Ironically, his race team 23XI Racing, alongside Bob Jenkins’ Front Row Motorsports, is currently challenging the order of things in NASCAR with an Anti-trust lawsuit awaiting its next verdict on December 9th.

Those teams have re-filed their preliminary injunction, which aimed to have them racing as chartered teams in 2025. They argue that running part-time entries will cause them ‘irreparable financial harm.’  However, NASCAR does not wish to budge on that motion to help accommodate the plaintiffs.“Plaintiffs’ primary claim of irreparable harm—that they might lose sponsors, drivers, and fans if they compete as “open” teams during NASCAR’s 2025 Cup Series season—is both unsubstantiated and baseless” Maybe that is how it is in the eyes of NASCAR’s officials.

However, from a different perspective, Denny Hamlin has voiced uncertainty about whether 23XI Racing could make it to the Daytona 500 next year. Meanwhile, the team’s signing of Riley Herbst in the third car, pending approval of the SHR charter sale, throws a spanner in the works. It raised questions about whether Hamlin and Co. are facing problems turning up at the Daytona 500 without an issue.  There are a lot of questions left unanswered, but NASCAR’s uncompromising stature is no secret anymore, with newer details emerging from the lawsuit proceedings every other day. The math is simple between the lines: If 23XI Racing and FRM race as open teams, they receive a lesser payout than teams who signed the new charter agreement early in September.

But from the looks of things, NASCAR prioritizes cutting sponsor logos from crew member firesuits in the Truck Series as a more effective way to reduce costs in the sport. The tale of two extremes is almost satirical. Hence, when the news of this nearly unbelievable development dropped, others had more changes to suggest while the ruler-makers were still at it.

A distraction from deeper issues in the Truck Series

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Let’s make one thing clear. Everyone wants the sport to be more economical for equal opportunities and fairer rewards. Does tweaking firesuits in NASCAR’s third tier seem like the type of change to save the big bucks in a sport as expensive as NASCAR? For all its worth, the Truck Series has other issues, like a lack of ample punishment when drivers go rogue on track. Example? The Conner Jones-Matt Mills incident at Martinsville. A one-race ban for sending your fellow driver to the hospital does not sound like NASCAR is exercising its control the way it should in the wider background of driver safety.

Another diehard member of the NASCAR community drove the initial emotion home, writing, “While they’re changing rules and stuff, go ahead and eliminate stage breaks.” And it’s hard to argue with that. NASCAR spotter, Joel Edmonds, had another issue he hoped NASCAR would address, and he put it out with a hint of comedy. “I saved more money by not going to the bar tonight than this will save. If they wanna save money just have non-competitive pit stops. There is only 3 or less a race anyways,” mused Edmonds.

To add to the discussions, one concerned fan had an entire list penned out for NASCAR: “Non-competitive pit stops maybe 2 mins Cap teams at 3 trucks, maybe even 2 Raise purses and TV payouts. Penalize bad drivers more often. Get bigger sponsors. More Friday night races, get some on broadcast.” Should the sport look at all these changes, the product will certainly be better for it. Besides, two things are always true in NASCAR. 1) The top bosses never shy away from listening to the fans’ demands. And 2) The sport has been one big experiment conducted over 76 years, and it has to evolve with the times, no matter the outside noises.

So, we must all be patient with NASCAR. But whether this firesuit revamp helps the sport financially or not is anybody’s guess.