{"id":83213,"date":"2025-02-12T10:21:52","date_gmt":"2025-02-12T16:21:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/denny-hamlin-breaks-down-nascar-updating-race-manipulation-rule-hard-to-fully-stop-it\/"},"modified":"2025-02-12T10:21:52","modified_gmt":"2025-02-12T16:21:52","slug":"denny-hamlin-breaks-down-nascar-updating-race-manipulation-rule-hard-to-fully-stop-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/denny-hamlin-breaks-down-nascar-updating-race-manipulation-rule-hard-to-fully-stop-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Denny Hamlin breaks down NASCAR updating race manipulation rule: \u2018Hard to fully stop it\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

NASCAR made modifications to its race manipulation rules<\/strong><\/a> ahead of the 2025 season, following two high-profile incidents in the playoffs last year at Martinsville.<\/p>\n

Driver Denny Hamlin<\/strong> broke down the new changes.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat they\u2019re trying to do here is keep us from manipulating races,\u201d Hamlin said on his Actions Detrimental<\/a><\/em> podcast. \u201cKeep the manufacturers from manipulating the races. Before there was kind of like a 100% rule, or maybe that went away, I\u2019m not really sure. Nobody ever really got dinged for that that I know of. Maybe Cole Custer at the Roval.\u201d<\/p>\n

The new rule is more widely interpretable, which could lead to more drivers being dinged for race manipulation in the future.<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s perfectly OK to Hamlin, who seemed to see a need for cleaning up the practice in the first place. After all, the races aren\u2019t designed for multiple drivers to collude.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have no issues in this whatsoever. I think something needed to be done,\u201d Hamlin said. \u201cObviously this goes beyond \u2014 I know it\u2019s easy to put the microscope on Martinsville as the big culprit. It\u2019s where we saw it rear its head. But this goes on in other races as well. Not just cut-off races. And it\u2019s been going on for years.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hamlin pointed to a very specific example of race manipulation that occurred prior to the rule change.<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember, not to call a specific team out, but a Bristol cut-off race where one of the competitors had an incident,\u201d Hamlin said. \u201cNext thing you know all of his teammates had mechanical failures. They\u2019re on pit road like something\u2019s 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last season, two questionable incidents took center stage at Martinsville.<\/p>\n

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

Those kinds of incidents should be easier to police with the new race manipulation rule, but Hamlin said there\u2019s no magic elixir.<\/p>\n

\u201cI 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,\u201d Hamlin said. \u201cBut this certainly stops the logjam behind William Byron. I think it stops that.\u201d<\/p>\n

The post Denny Hamlin breaks down NASCAR updating race manipulation rule: \u2018Hard to fully stop it\u2019<\/a> appeared first on On3<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NASCAR made modifications to its race manipulation rules ahead of the 2025 season, following two…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-83213","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83213","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83213"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83213\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}