Denny Hamlin: NASCAR should have moved up race at Michigan with weather threat

Denny Hamlin believes the start time for the NASCAR Cup Series race at Michigan should have been moved up an hour earlier than scheduled. On the Actions Detrimental podcast, Hamlin explained why that move would have benefited everyone.

“The advantage that it would have gave is it would have gave us more time on the front end,” Hamlin explained. “Let’s pretend you had one hour more of racing on the front end, which you would have because we didn’t go caution into like right when we fired our engine. So one hour start time up, if we go green, you’re looking at 50 laps there. Stage 1 happens before that first sprinkle happens. Then after the sprinkle happens, we run, we get another 50 laps in. Now we’re at halfway.

“What happens then is when we get that shower at 5:30, we think we can have this thing dried by 6:30, the end of the race is at 8:20, we can get the entirety of the race in. But if we have one more drop, it’s over. We’ve got an official race, but if the rain can stop at a certain time, we’re going to give you the entire race. I can’t be exact but I’m sure that big shower that we had that canceled us was the last shower for quite some time, so we would have been able to actually get the entire race in. There would have only been 100 laps to go, not 150.”

Denny Hamlin says NASCAR has ‘chased ratings for so long’

The start times for NASCAR races have been talked about a lot this week since they range from early in the afternoon to later at night. Hamlin was asked if NASCAR should go with a 1 p.m. ET start time for all of its races.

“I mean there’s an argument to be had both ways,” Hamlin explained. “I believe, now again I don’t have all the information that NASCAR has, right, but man we have chased ratings for so long. We’re willing to be on different networks and we’re going to streaming and our start times are all over the place. Just chasing ratings. Chasing it. Is that the best thing for the sport versus having you know at Sunday, 1 o’clock you have a race to watch?”

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