Denny Hamlin breaks down NASCAR updating race manipulation rule: ‘Hard to fully stop it’

NASCAR made modifications to its race manipulation rules ahead of the 2025 season, following two high-profile incidents in the playoffs last year at Martinsville.

Driver Denny Hamlin broke down the new changes.

“What they’re trying to do here is keep us from manipulating races,” Hamlin said on his Actions Detrimental podcast. “Keep the manufacturers from manipulating the races. Before there was kind of like a 100% rule, or maybe that went away, I’m not really sure. Nobody ever really got dinged for that that I know of. Maybe Cole Custer at the Roval.”

The new rule is more widely interpretable, which could lead to more drivers being dinged for race manipulation in the future.

But that’s perfectly OK to Hamlin, who seemed to see a need for cleaning up the practice in the first place. After all, the races aren’t designed for multiple drivers to collude.

“I have no issues in this whatsoever. I think something needed to be done,” Hamlin said. “Obviously this goes beyond — I know it’s easy to put the microscope on Martinsville as the big culprit. It’s where we saw it rear its head. But this goes on in other races as well. Not just cut-off races. And it’s been going on for years.”

Hamlin pointed to a very specific example of race manipulation that occurred prior to the rule change.

“I remember, not to call a specific team out, but a Bristol cut-off race where one of the competitors had an incident,” Hamlin said. “Next thing you know all of his teammates had mechanical failures. They’re on pit road like something’s broke to try to get the positions back for their (team). This has been going on for quite some time, and it happens a lot during the playoffs.”

Last season, two questionable incidents took center stage at Martinsville.

First, Bubba Wallace appeared to give Christopher Bell an easy pass on the final lap as Bell was looking for positioning that could get him into the Championship Four. Then, Ross Chastain and Austin Dillon appeared to block the track for William Byron to keep him from losing positioning.

Those kinds of incidents should be easier to police with the new race manipulation rule, but Hamlin said there’s no magic elixir.

“I think it will be hard to fully stop it because teams still will just kind of get creative, and it will be hard to prove otherwise,” Hamlin said. “But this certainly stops the logjam behind William Byron. I think it stops that.”

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