The last couple of NASCAR races have been chaotic, yes, because everyone wants to maximize their last few shots at qualifying for the playoffs or to be crowned the regular season champion. Although crashes add a certain amount of thrill to the sport, it is also dangerous. Although NASCAR’s continued efforts on safety have made the next-gen car safer. The crashes are still scary and should be avoided.

In the past four races of the Cup Series and Xfinity Series combined, so many cars have been airborne that it has raised questions about efforts being taken to mitigate these. Amid all this NASCAR veteran, Denny Hamlin favors Dale Earnhardt’s opinion and believes that flipping during a race is not necessarily worse.

Denny Hamlin on the recent car flips

Cars flipping in, and races have been happening for a long time. It is just high-speed cars, toppling over as they lose control. In the recent time, Cabo Wabo 250 started the long list of flips. On the final lap of the race, while racing down the backstretch, the No. 28 Ford of Kyle Sieg, became entangled in a pileup, resulting in the car flipping onto its roof and sliding across the track before hitting the wall. It slid on its roof for a considerable amount of time before coming to a stop. This was followed by an even scarier flip of Corey LaJoie at the Cup Series race on the same Michigan track.

Corey LaJoie’s race took a dramatic turn for the worse during the final stage. While battling with Noah Gragson, LaJoie’s car spun and flipped after making contact with Gragson’s left rear. The car unexpectedly went airborne, rolling multiple times on the infield grass after hitting the inside wall. This was perhaps the scariest crash in recent times. Here, take a look:

Coming, the most recent Cup Series race on the iconic Daytona has its share of airborne incidents. First up, on lap 152, while leading, Michael McDowell’s car spun and slid across the track, only to be struck by Joey Logano coming from behind. The impact sent McDowell’s car airborne, but it miraculously landed upright without flipping. In another instance, with only 2 laps to go into the race, the race leader Josh Berry lost control of his car and had contact with Austin Cindric.

This made the car airborne before landing on its roof and sliding as it hit the inside wall and kept spinning before coming to a halt. In all the instances, the crashes were dramatic, yet the drivers were okay. Denny Hamlin, on the Actions Detrimental episode, claimed that their flipping is what kept them safe.

He said, “There haven’t been many major injuries come from flipping. It’s you know you’re dispersing energy when you’re flipping um if you know if Josh Berry’s car does not flip over he hits the inside side wall harder. Why because when he flips over that is essentially slowing his car down as it’s as it’s turned to the side starts to flip over his car is slowing in speed if that car doesn’t and it just streamlines into the inside wall without a flip it’s going faster it hits the wall.”

Further explaining how flipping slows down the car while hitting the wall doesn’t, Denny Hamlin emphasized, “Hey at least your tires would be on the ground so you’d be locking up your tires and slowing down that way but I just feel like when the car does turn sideways and catches air like that it’s I feel like it slows it down a lot okay…I don’t agree with slowing us down to where we’re going to just slow you down until these things don’t flip over anymore. I just they’ve been flipping over for decades man but I just feel like it’s not necessarily a totally bad thing.”

Although flips should be avoided at all costs, they are not in the driver’s control or, for that matter, anyone’s control. Yes, NASCAR did make some changes to the car to avoid flips, but that did not work. Even Dale Earnhardt Jr. commented on the flips and was blunt, as he said they are consequential.

A blunt response to the recent incidents

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NASCAR introduced a new air deflector above the right-side window of all Cup cars this weekend at Daytona. The deflector, similar to an existing one on the left side, is designed to make it harder for cars to flip over at high speeds. It did not work as NASCAR is a high-speed event and these flips are inevitable.

If NASCAR wants to mitigate the issue, they’ll probably have to make the cars go slower, but that won’t be fun. The thing to note is that cars are safe enough for drivers to not injure themselves. So we would just have to accept that flips are part of the game.

Reiterating this Dale Jr. took to X in a series of tweets, where he wrote, “It’s been an issue for over 45 years. If you wanna go fast you gonna have to realize the repercussions when it goes wrong.” As the NASCAR solution failed, can there really be a concrete solution for this?

He says no! In another tweet, Dale Earnhardt Jr. wrote, “Don’t know that you’ll ever rid that particular element of danger.” Yes, the safety of drivers inside the cars should keep improving if they ever face such situations. Other than that, it is what it is. And we will continue to see such spectacular flips in the races to come.